2023, History, Music, Uncategorized

How Terribly Strange

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Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70….

– Paul Simon, Old Friends

The classic Simon & Garfunkel album Bookends was released in 1968. While working on the album, Paul Simon reportedly told a writer at High Fidelity, “I’m not interested in singles anymore”, but when the album emerged, it featured the hit single Mrs. Robinson, which was featured in the hit movie The Graduate.

The B-side of the single was the contemplative melody Old Friends, which segued into Bookends Theme (Reprise).

Paul Simon is 82 today. If weather permits, I hope he is sharing a park bench, quietly, with a friend.

How has the passage of time changed your views on aging?

33 thoughts on “How Terribly Strange”

  2. Being older sometimes means you can’t physically do the things you once did but it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t visualize it and remember doing it. I hiked in a rocky place near Seagull Lake yesterday. The trial was narrow and steep, with rocks and tree roots, and turns and twists. I was completely alone. I used to scamper up and down trails like that and I was acutely aware that I can’t do that anymore. I was terrified of falling out there all alone. So I carefully hiked my way down to the rocky shore, sat on a rock for awhile, then made my careful way back up the twisty trail. I saw a spruce grouse and that was delightful.

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  3. With each passing year, I’m much more aware of my mortality. I feel a vague urgency, as if all the things I want or hope to do in my life won’t fit into the years I have left. Not that I’ve shifted into overdrive and am working frantically to complete projects. I guess I’m more trying to appreciate more fully the goals I do reach and the little everyday pleasures and accomplishments.

    And as friends and acquaintances have died at relatively young ages–many in their 60s, I realize that I could easily become one of those early deaths. No guarantees, so be more careful crossing the street, turning the car into busy traffic, don’t golf in a thunderstorm, be super careful on my solo BWCAW trips, etc.

    Chris in Owatonna

    *BSP* I’ve got a doubleheader tomorrow. First, from 9-1, the final Riverwalk Market Fair in downtown Northfield. The forecast has gradually improved through the week and now it looks as if the rain will be done by morning. So just cloudy, cool and breezy. But the event expanded for this final day and there will be perhaps twice as many vendors as normal. Make sure to stop at either Goodbye Blue Monday Coffeehouse or the Hideaway Wine Bar and Coffeehouse for a hot cuppa whatever you like and a goody. Then come and check out all the great arts, crafts, books, foods and such that the vendors are selling.

    THEN I’ll be at the Twin Cities Book Festival from about 2-5 with my marketing co-op team called Midwest Mystery Works. All five MMW members’ books will be available starting at 10:00, and the team will staff the table in shifts. You can get a signed copy of one of my books only from 2-5. (Sorry, I forgot to pre-sign copies). The TCBF is huge, maybe 100 authors and publishers, with guest speakers and classes. It all goes down at the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. Enter off of Snelling Avenue and follow the signs to the Progress Building. *END BSP*

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  4. Although I do at times feel really old (esp. upon looking in the mirror), I don’t feel really old most of the time. When I feel it the most is in the technical realm, and I can feel overwhelmed just by the sheer volume of minutiae to be dealt with, esp. this time of year with decisions about next year’s health insurance, etc. There is the realization that at some point, I’m not going to be able to handle this…

    And time itself is such a weird thing – doesn’t seem linear anymore.

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  5. One of the things that’s disconcerting to me as I age is how much longer it takes little aches and pains to resolve themselves. A week ago I stepped on a dog toy. It’s just a pink rubbery donut thing with rubbery spines. Anyway, it hurt like heck immediately. I didn’t trip. I didn’t fall over – the whole experience took about a second or less. But I clearly bruised something and a week later my foot is still a little sore. So irritating.

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  7. There is a gift you have when you are in your twenties and thirties, and even somewhat beyond. It’s the ability to approach each season and holiday knowing that, while there are no guarantees, in all likelihood you have decades ahead of you to enjoy those cycles. There will be many more Christmases, spring melts, summers, State Fairs, fall colors. That slips away so gradually you’re not fully aware.

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  8. I had a Great Aunt who said, at the age of 95, that she would never want to go to a nursing home and live with a bunch of “dead beats”. My father lived to be 93. He umpired his last Minnesota State Basball tournament when he was in his late 80’s. He was also a driver for the Senior Volunteer program in Luverne and described what he did as helping the “elderly”, many of whom were his age or younger. He told that if you slow down, you die.

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    1. Sandra lives at the end of a hall in the memory care. To get there I go through the part for those with physical problems. I would not call most of them dead beats. (I am aware you did not say that.) one way or another they make a life, despite the fact they are very ignored by their families. Some are in fact jealous of y daily visits I am sorry to say. But they have their ways and means of not being dead. My favorite are two men in power wheel chairs who have their adventures such as racing up the steep hill to MSU. They both made it. One of them watches traffic and gives me daily oBservations on crazy student drivers.
      A receptionist at my eye doctor told me how she never visits her mother in law here because she whines all the time. She is one of three women who do puzzles who laugh and giggle and make fun of me, in good fun. I suppose she does whine to her dil. Such relationships are often complex. Sandra and my other had a ball together when we visited.

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      1. There’s a couple residents at my moms place that I really enjoy visiting with after I leave mom.

        No one races. Well, one guy tried to race a lady, but she scolded him.

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        1. Yes, my mom experienced some of that envy too. I felt like I should stay and talk to more of the residents, but I didn’t have the time. So many people are just not comfortable with people who have any kind of disability. It sometimes takes slowing down (as with Husband when he’s finding the words to speak), and that’s hard to do. It also reminds people that this is what could be ahead for them.

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      2. My mom got mad at me for helping a lady who was quite frail, and her dementia had left her with almost no common sense. She would wheel herself into a corner and she couldn’t figure out how to get out. My mom, who was always uncomfortable with people with disabilities, told me in no uncertain terms to leave the woman alone. She got mad every time I helped the lady out of her corner. Once when I asked this lady if she needed anything, she told me she was trying to find the carrots to put in a pot roast she was making for her family. She would touch the walls and mutter at them. After I asked her, I realized she thought she was in a grocery store looking for ingredients for her supper meal. There is no way for me to stop myself from helping someone like that, or at least talking to them, but it sure made my mom mad.

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  9. I have mentioned the twin boys we took under our wing back in 1968. They are now 71 and are facing some degree of blindness. The one we are now closest to had surgery to save his left eye from Fuch’s dystrophy, a degenerative cornea disease. Waiting to see if it worked. His twin is waiting with great concern. He is not as bad. But …
    They both have dealt with retina tears. Both are so full of life. Aging is scarier for them at this moment.
    Bookends is my favorite of their albums.
    Clyde

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  10. 2019 when I had cellulitis in my leg, that really brought it home how mortal I was. Then all the issues in 2022… Even the Rep 40th anniversary celebration. Forty years!! I was son young! Hard to believe.

    Not that I believe this, but it’s got a catchy beat.

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  12. My paternal grandmother lived to be in her early 90’s. She drove well into her 80’s, and loved to drive fast. She once came roaring up to my dad’s business in her Oldsmobile, got out of the car and declared “Hi ho Silver!”.

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  13. I am considerably younger now, at 72, than I had expected to be when I was but a lad, at 22. I attribute this to having grown up in a Los Angeles suburb where there were very few people around older than my parents.

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  14. Feisty Nonny is back home after a 10 day stay in the hospital for Covid. She is fine but of course after being sedentary for that long now she needs to have physical therapy and occupational therapy again. Kind of a given these days. At 91 she is still fiercely hanging on to as much independence as she can.

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  15. Paul Simon tells about meeting his soon to be wife Edie Brickell. Other interviews, from her perspective, reveal that she was struck by his appearance off stage and forgot her lyrics! Love at first sight! Maybe….

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