Insecure

Secure means stable as well as safe.  Approaching 87, I am finding my balance weakening.  I am getting unstable and prone to fall, a bit unsafe, ot secure as I used to be. 

12/10/19

Growing Older

As a child, we yearn to grow up, delighting in earning one year, year by year, counting our age on our fingers when our birthday comes around. Growing older was exciting.  Many of us in our 20s experience trepidation as we approach 30.  Getting older becomes anathema as we get older.  Curious, isn’t it, that in old age, aging becomes innocuous, maybe even welcome.  This is my experience, anyway. Reaching 80, I started to find delight, again, earning one full year, year by year.  It is a delight in reflection rather than in anticipation, this satisfaction, looking back, of having spent a year in health and contentment, a sense of accomplishment even without any accomplishment to boast of.  At 86, I look forward to my 87th birthday.  It’s great.

04/07/19

Forgetful but. . .

Viewing on YouTube video the repertory of the Buglisi Dance Company in preparation for attending its latest performance, I realized that I hardly remembered them even though I saw them previously, two or three times.  This was four years ago.  More recently, after attending Mozart’s Idomeneo, I thought I had never seen it before; but checking my record I discovered that I had seen it four times already in a decade.  Sometimes, what I didn’t remember, I rationalize, was forgotten because it was forgettable.  On the bright side, however, poor memory retention in old age is a boon because what might be a tiresome old hat of experience turns out to be all new and fresh.

Blurring

Sitting in a theater, I have been noticing for the past year or so that my hearing has been weakening.  Weakening is not quite what has been happening; it is more like blurring. It’s not that the sound I hear is getting faint; words are losing clear contours.  So, the lines spoken on the stage are getting hard to hear unless I am sitting close to the stage, perhaps within five or six rows. It is somewhat like seeing through a grime-covered glass; outlines are recognizable but details are lost.  I have been noticing, too, that I am more often asking to repeat what the person I was conversing with was saying.

The very same phenomenon is happening with my eyesight.  My ophthalmologist assured me that my sight is good and that I am free of cataract and glaucoma.  Yet, even with my new glasses on, writings in the distance are blurred; and supertitles in the theater are sometimes hard to read.  On the computer monitor, I can enlarge the text, and that is helpful.  Reading printed books has become hard and slow Again, I easily misread words, and reading small types is painful. The hyphen often shows itself as an equal sign; a and s are interchangeable.  Squinting the eyes used to sharpen the focus and make the text clearer; but now I see better if I open my eyes wide, as wide as possible, apparently so as to allow more light into the eyes.  So, it makes sense that I see better under brighter light.

My memory is also getting blurry, especially the short-term memory, words and names, sometimes some simple words.  All these blurs are expected at my age. I’m sure, approaching 84.  I get sleepy a lot during the day; I often doze at the table after or even during my breakfast.  My mind is then really blurry.  I believe this has to do with the fact that my bedtime is normally 2:00 a.m. and I have habitually six hours of sleep.  I don’t forget tasks and appointments. My hands don’t shake and my balance is good.  My knees are firm though I wobble a little when I take a seat on a subway, and my gait is still secure.  Most importantly, except when I am sleepy, my thinking is clear and alert.  Thank heavens!  

Limping

I’m limping.  I took a fall Saturday night, 2 April, carrying a carton of recycle paper with a pile of flattened cartons on top down the elevator to the street level and the few steps to the basement of my apartment building. The cardboard stack was light and wobbly and high, in poor balance with the heavy carton full of paper, and I could not see where I was going, or rather, where my feet were going. Accidents occur from carelessness and lack of foresight; I graphically lacked foresight.  I should have made two separate trips as was obvious only in hindsight. 

By fortune, I didn’t break any bone; I hurt neither my hip nor my knees.  I got a scrape on my right arm (under a sweater sleeve), a blow on a left rib, and a twist in in my left ankle.  All evening, it was excruciating to take steps, even to put my injured foot down on the floor.  Recovery was visible overnight, however; I could walk, though painfully, with a limp the next day.

I see on the streets people of my age or older (and younger, too) limping along or else treading wearily with a cane or a walker, and, seeing them, I ruminate that eventually I will be like them while at the same time they always make me feel sprightly and happy to be able to move nimbly.  My injury was light and I expect to be bouncy again soon. 

It so happened that I had a reserved ticket Sunday to a concert across the town at Alice Tully Hall.  I was at my computer in the afternoon and when I realized and looked at the clock, it was 4:50, and the concert was to start at 5:00.  There was no way I could make it, but paradoxically I had no regret.  With the uncertain ankle, one is prone to turn it easily, certainly going down the subway stairs, and it made good sense to stay home.  I thought I made a wise decision after a laughably foolish act.  Actually, it wasn’t that; it wasn’t by design. I had forgotten about the concert until it was too late — another carelessness. Still, I felt a higher being guiding me away from still another foolishness of going out limping and taking another fall.

PS.  Limping makes one look old, easily older by ten years. 

50 Old, 50 Young

When I left Japan to come to the U.S. to study, I was 19 and Mother was 50.  From my vantage point, she was by no means very old but mature and old, perhaps just for being my mother.  When I reached 50, I thought of myself as still young and vigorous; there is no way I could think that I was at Mother’s age.  My niece in Japan, the younger daughter of my elder sister, with an 11-year old daughter of her own, reached 50 this year, and she is oh so young, over 30 years my junior.  A person’s age is a peculiar phenomenon.  It betrays the fluid perspectival perception of time. 

あたしがアメリカに留学に来るので日本を離れたのが19歳のとき、母は50歳でした。その時のあたしの目には、年寄りではありませんでしたけど、母親故でしょうか、年配に感じました。あたし自身が50歳に達した時には、まだ元気溌溂の若さいっぱいで、50歳の母と同年とは考えられませんでした。日本にいるあたしの姪、姉の次女ですけど、11歳になるひとり娘がいて、今年50歳になりました。私より30あまり年下、若々しいです。人の年齢、奇妙なものですね。時間の透視感覚の流動性ともいうものでしょうか。

Fast and Crisp no more

When I hear young women talking rapidly with lilt and grace, enunciating each syllable and consonant distinctly, I realize that I could no longer spin out words in the same way without practice and effort even when I have much to say in a hurry; I did with such ease at one time, nonetheless, and I am reminded that I am old. For that matter, I can no longer skip and hop sprightly any more as I once did, either, though I try, nor, alas, think nimbly, not as I used to.    

Being a Child Again

When we reach 80, we get to be childish again; I, for one, enjoy watching little children skipping and hopping and exercising their curiosity in all things in sight, and, in fact, acting like a little naughty girl myself.  Living into old age is, indeed, felicitous. 

Living to be 100

Woody Allen is quoted to have said, “You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100.”

No, no, no, not true!  On the contrary, so long as you continue to do all the things you really want to do and enjoy doing, you are bound very likely to live to be 100.  

Heavy doors - 重いドア

Two days ago, when, standing in line at the ladies room, I came to the springing door and tried to take it over from a young woman before me to hold it with my elbow and back, she said with a look of concern: “I’ll hold it; it’s heavy. You look frail.” Surely, I don’t look sturdy, never did, but it took me by surprise that I looked so frail.  It is true, however, I’m lately finding heavy doors hard to push and even when I use a revolving door I wait to find someone to go in front of me or from the other side so that I can enter without pushing.

二日前の事，お手洗いの列に並んでいて、跳ね返るドアの所に来た時，前の若い女性から引継いで肘と肩で押さえようとすると、彼女心配そうに云うには、［大丈夫？　きついのよ。あたしがおさえてる」。あたし、元々頑丈な体つきではありませんけど，弱々しく見られたのははじめての事で、ちょっとびっくり。でもこの所、重いドアを押すのが大変で、回転ドアでも、誰か向こうから来る人か、先きに入る人の来るのを待って押さずに入るようにしている事は実際です。

Melancholy

Pang of melancholy hits, sitting in the house alone, perhaps idly, in half light as at dusk; it hits harder waking after dozing involuntarily and becoming keenly aware of the stillness of the place.  So, to avoid such situation of loneliness, it is advisable to keep the room well lit, have a radio or television turned on and stay awake and alert but, above all, get up and keep busy moving about.

Aging day by day - 日毎年寄り

頻繁と云う程ではないですけど、時たま、そして近頃は屢々、バスや電車で、男女問わず、年齢も若い人から中年以上、あたしがいかにも弱々しく、よたよたしているが如きに、席を譲ってくれます。一見、古い礼節の既に失われた世の中、それも、ニューヨークの事、まったくの自己本位でなくても、危機でもなければ、物思いに忙しくて付近のの事に無関心勝ちの人間の中、注目を促します。振り返ると、去年の秋頃気付いたのは、それ以前はくるぶしに届く長いスカートをはいていると、たまに席を譲ってくれる人がいたのに、ミニスカートでも席を譲られる様になった事です。そう弱々しく老いてみられる程の皺やたるみや猫背が、自身ではないと思ってますし、でなければスカートの下に目立つ痩せぎすの足や膝、にぎり棒を掴むごつごつの指など、あらわかも。それとも、姿勢が腰曲がりか、バランスの悪いのが目につくのかしら。あたしのお友達連中は、歳よりもずっと若く見えるとおだててくれますけど、誰ぞ知る，明らかに一部の人には、弱々しく見えるのでしょう。まあ、しかたがない。81歳を越してますものね。ぼけてませんけどお年寄り。でも変った事実は自分の目には見えない様です。それにも拘らず、地下鉄の階段を上り下りする時、それほど若くないご連中が危い足取りで行くのを、とんとんと足早で通り越す自分を見るのは、心強い事です。

Not often but now and then, and increasingly more frequently of late, I am offered a seat on trains and busses by men and women, young and not so young, as though I am weak and tottering. This is noteworthy in this age when chivalry is a relic and, in New York of all places, where people are, unless in crisis, noticeably self-absorbed and unthinking, if not, as more likely, downright self-centered.  It was last fall when I first noticed that I would be offered a seat even when my skirt was mini in length whereas previously I was offered a seat occasionally only when my skirt was down to the ankles.  I wonder if I look so obviously old and frail with sags and wrinkles and a hunch I am not quite aware of, or else the bony knees and legs below the hem and the gnarled fingers holding the pole.  Or, perhaps, is my posture bowed or my balance visibly uncertain?  My friends flatter me that I look so much younger than my age.  But who knows; there are clearly some who see me old and frail. Oh, well, after all, I'm past 81 - not yet senile but aged enough.  And yet, I'm hard put to see the changes myself.  It is reassuring, nonetheless, to see, when walking up and down the subway stairs, that I still go scuttling and pass those not so young ambling gingerly, even precariously.

Comfort vs. Pleasure

The comfort of staying in the warm house on a frigid winter night is, of course, irresistibly tempting, but when it is placed on a balance with the pleasure of music, dance, or theater, even if I have to bundle up and persevere the blistery wind to get to the place where performance is given, the latter outweighs the former.  When the balance tips in the other direction and I start to find more satisfaction in the passive pleasure of comfort than in the comfort of active pleasure, I will know that my body is no longer young, claim as I may otherwise in spirit.

Bongevity - 福寿

Living into old age is considered felicitous in all cultures. Life is precious and to have it cut short is no doubt a great misfortune, even though in long perspective one can not really be sure that is so.  There are those who die before 40 and accomplish much, while others live to 100 and leave behind little they can be proud of.  People are certainly living longer today than, say, a century ago.  To some extent modern medicine has been aiding longevity but too often for its own sake with tubes and various mechanical devices without regard for its quality.  What is really to be celebrated is a prolonged good life -- fukuju rather than mere chôju in Japanese or bongevity in my coinage, as distinct from longevity.

A happy long life or bongevity requires, first of all, good health, naturally, and a modestly comfortable fund to insure it.  But in my pursuit of bongevity, I also attend to these five disciplines: setting a clear purpose in living day by day, finding joy in the immediate world, avoiding unnecessary worries, exercising compassion, and surrounding myself with a circle of good friends.

To insure good health, one must be kind to one’s own body. This does not mean engaging in rigorous exercises, but developing a habit of simple diligence in doing anything, that is, making effort in everyday affairs where effort is called for, like walking, climbing up and down the stairs, keeping house, running errands and carrying stuff; strictly to be avoided are slacking and slouching.  Then, one must eat well, that is, choose simple but wholesome food and eat lightly and mindfully.  Physical well-being is to an extent promised by a comfortable finance, and this has to be planned long ahead; living frugally with minimal luxury and saving from early in one’s working years assure a comfortable asset in retirement, which in turn removes material worries in day-to-day living in old age; but the habit of saving also trains us to continue living thriftily, that is, simply but not parsimoniously.

Setting willfully a full agenda of satisfying activities day by day gives a focus and purpose in living and sharpens our awareness of our own good life in the making and provides an enormous source of happiness.  Living with a purpose and in contentment naturally disposes us to stop worrying where worrying is futile and helps us to observe more attentively every little thing that goes around us, and enjoy it. Through my life I trained myself to enjoy work as best as I can, and in retirement I am enjoying not working even more, doing what I like to do and doing little of what I don’t like, or else training myself to like doing what I cannot avoid doing even though it’s not what I prefer to do.  A happy disposition is an aura that often brings happiness to others but also makes one irresistibly generous and compassionate and makes us find gratification in giving.  One can be happy alone and I am not gregarious by nature; still, a circle of good friends, not acquaintances but true friends, is a huge solace, aside from a pet at home and, not to be underrated, ghosts from the past, that is to say, the wealth of happy memories. 

Misfortune could befall anyone at any place and any time.  But, so far, putting in practice what I preach, I find myself at 80 thoroughly fulfilled in the state of bongevity.


長生きをするのは何処の文化でもおめでたい事とされています。命は尊いもの，短い人生は確かにに不幸な事ですけど，長い目で見ると必ずしもそうとは云えないみたいです。４０才前にこの世を去っても，偉大な業績を残す人もあれば，又１００迄生きても特に誇らしいものなく一生を終える人もいます。一世紀前と比べて今近の一生はずっと長くなっています。これはある程度，近代の医学によるものですが、しばしば 器械や管を体に入れて 命を保つのみで，生き甲斐というものは考慮に入れてない場合が多い様です。本当に祝うべきは，生きる幸福感を長引かせる事でしょう。つまり，単なる長寿よりも福寿、英語には適当な言葉がありませんけど，私なりの新造語で，longevityに対してbongevityとでも云いましょうか。

生き甲斐のある生涯、福寿，を得るには健康である事が明らかに条件の第一ですが，それに健康を保証する為にはある程度の資産が必要ですね。私自身の福寿の追求には，加えて，五ヶ条の規律を守るようにしています。先ず、毎日の生活にはっきりとした目標を持つこと，身近の世界に喜ばしいものを見つける事，取り越し苦労を避ける事，他人に対する深い気持ちを養う事、そして気の合った友人との交際を作る事、これらが揃っている事が、大事だと思います。

健康を保つには，自分の体に親切である事，ただしこれは激しい運動に夢中になるのではなくて，何事をするにもまめに体を動かす習慣を養う事，つまり，徒歩，階段の上り下り,　家事、用足し，ものの持ち運び、といった、毎日の努力を必要とする仕事をするのに手を抜かないこと，なにより避けるべきは無精怠慢。それから、簡素なりとも健康な食べ物を選び，軽い食事を良く味わって楽しむ事。健康を得るには、ある程度の金融に頼らなければなりませんが，これには長期間の計画が必要です。職業に就いたら早くから，贅沢を避けつましい生活を保って貯金する事によって，引退後の財源を作り、老後の毎日の生活の不安を取り除く事になります。それに，倹約の習慣は，後々迄つましい生き方を養います。つましいというのは，簡素な事で，けちけちする事ではありません。

生活の目標を立てるというのは，日毎,  意図して充実した日程を立てる事、つまりその日に成し遂げる仕事を十分計画して実行する事で、そうすると，生き甲斐のある毎日が鋭く意識され、幸福感をもたらせる様になります。目的と満足感のある生活を得ると，自然、心配しても無駄な取り越し苦労が無意味になって，身の回りの世界を，仔細な事迄，深く観察する様になり，それが楽しくなるものです。私は，職についていた時から常に出来るだけ仕事を楽しむ様に努めて来ましたので，引退後は無職の状態をより増して楽しみ，やりたいことをやり、やりたくないことはやらないという訳です。幸福感の状態は他人に影響する香気の様なものがあり，それ故に寛大さ，同情の気持ちが強く働き，ひとに与える喜びとか満足感が出て来ます。私は元々,　社交的とは云えない方で，一人の生活でも満足ですけど，友人，単なる知り合いではなくて，本当の親しい友人、に囲まれている事は何よりの慰みです。飼っている動物もいいし，それに過去の亡霊，つまり多くの楽しい思い出も無視出来ません。

不幸は，誰にも起こる事，何時何処で起こるか解りませんが，今のところ、こう云う事を出来るだけ実践に移して，現８０才で，福寿の幸福に浸りきっています。

PS.  By coincidence, two weeks after writing this commentary, I encountered a quotation by one Philodemus, a disciple of Epicurus, who, summarizing the true principle of Epicurianism as simple living rather than life of indulgent luxury, wrote that it is impossible to live pleasurably “without living prudently and honourably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic.”
(Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, W. W. Norton, 2011, p. 77)

追記。偶然，この一文を書いて二週間のち、エピクロスの弟子、フィロデモスの引用に遭遇しましたが，エピクロスの快楽主義の真髄は、贅沢散漫ではなくて素朴な生活である事を論じて，「慎重な、そして公正、率直な，尊敬を得るような生き方をせずに、勇気，節制，鷹揚雅量にも欠け、又友人を持たず，慈善を施す事を知らずに過ごしては」快楽に満ちた一生は不可能なことである、と。（スティーヴン　グリーンブラット著，一四一七年，その一冊がすべてを変えた，柏書房、２０１２）

Eating Light - 腹八分 - Hara Hachibu

I have never been a heavy eater.  After all, I grew up with a wartime starvation diet and have a small stomach.  Still, having acculturated to the American way of ample life, such as attested in the humongous serving at restaurants, I have been enjoying eating to full satisfaction, which accounted, I realize, for my recent waxing waistline, about which I wrote earlier.  Since I started weighing myself every morning, I developed quickly a habit of eating less than full, not beyond the point at which I still crave for a little more, and I feel much healthier and I am sure I am.  The Japanese has the expression hara hachibu, meaning 80 percent full, and I remember Mother often said it and practiced it, too.  Keeping to 80 percent, we never feel that particular feeling of indolence we have when we exclaim, “Oh, I’m so full.”  It occurs to me that a glass filled to the brim inevitably spills.

あたしは，大食ではありません。大体、食難不足の戦時中に育ちましたから，胃袋は小さめです。でも，渡米以来、アメリカのレストランに出て来る一人分の莫大な量に見られるような、豊満生活に慣れて、常に十分満足するまで食べるようになっていました。これが，前に書きました，腰の広がりの一因かと気付き，毎朝秤で体重を調べるようになってから，速やかに一度の食事の量を意識して減らすように習慣付け，未だ食べ足りないと思う所で止める様にしていますが，それ以来，健康感があり，また実際健康です。日本で「腹八分」と云う表現がありますけど，母が屢々言ってましたし，又，実行もしてました。腹八分で止めると，「あぁ，お腹いっぱい食べたわ」と言葉に出す時独特の怠慢感がありません。そう云えば，コップも淵迄満たすとこぼれますよね。

Walking with a Cane - 杖つき

A properly dressed elderly man walking with a cane can look like a gentleman with a walking stick even if he is limping, but a woman, regardless of her age and attire, can only appear old and ailing, when going about with a cane.

身なりのきちんとした年配の男の人が杖を持っていると，びっこをひいていても，ステッキを手にした紳士に見えるものですけど，女の人が杖を持って歩いていると，年配，服装に限らず，よぼよぼのばあさんに見られますね。

Writing about Death

We are advised that we write, if we write, about what we know from first hand experience, even if it is a fiction that we write.  So, we write about the death of others as we observed it and wept over it and describe the sorrow we had experienced.  But of dying we can only write from imagination because we are no longer in a position to write after experiencing death first hand, with the exception of a rare instance, of course, of a person writing after having been revived from what was mistakenly taken to be death.

End of Unhappiness

Every life is precious, of course; still as heartless as it may sound to say, though true it is, there are situations where the demise of a person deserves rejoicing rather than mourning when she or he was so fiendishly unhappy in life and made other people as well undeservedly unhappy.

ひとの命は無論尊いゆえ、こう云うのは無常に聞こえるかもしれませんけど、事実のところ, 一生涯悲惨に不幸で、他のもの迄も不当に不幸にした者の死は、悲しむよりも喜んで然りと云えるでしょう。

Life Lived Well

There are those in old age whose body deteriorates while their mind remains alert up to the point of death; and there are those whose mind erodes progressively while the body remains relatively intact.  Which is better is a matter of idle meditation in so far as ultimately we don’t have a choice even if we preferred one to the other.   With the alternative between a sudden death and a slow prolonged process toward death; if one might be less painful, the other allows time to prepare all concerned for the inevitable end. Though longevity is celebrated in many cultures, its blessing depends on the quality of life lived.  So, an early death, generally bemoaned for cutting a life short, may have been a blessing in so far as the remaining life, if lived, might have turned to be full of misery.  Some live a short life and accomplish a lot; others may live longer and accomplish less.  Short or long, life lived well is the greatest blessing.  Such thoughts enter my mind as I approach 80.

Growing old

“I grow old. . . I grow old. . . /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. . .,” so wrote T. S. Eliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Learning that he started writing the poem in 1910 -- it was published in 1915 -- when the poet, born in 1888, was only 22 years old, I realized how shockingly young to think about aging and express it so touchingly and  W. B. Yeats, born in 1865, was only 35 in 1910; he lived till 1939, and only when he reached 60/61 in 1926 he wrote, "An aged man is a but a paltry thing/A tattered coat upon a stick. . ." in his Sailing to Byzantium.  Having somehow kept the impression of T. S. Eliot as a leading modern poet opposite Yeats, a bit of a Victorian legacy, I am also astonished not only how young he was but also how early in the 20th century he wrote. How old were The Beatles when they sang "When I'm Sixty-Four"?  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which the song appeared, was released in 1967, and Paul McCarney was 27.  As for myself, I hardly thought about growing old before sixty-four, or for that matter even thereafter. . . well, perhaps on rare fleeting moments after seventy-seven.