of course, i don't mean to spread despair amongst us older folks. that said, i'm now asking myself why i did all those things, like live in a berlin basement, wander the streets of new delhi, make love in the sand (really stupid) or swimming in salty water (i don't think astronauts have much fun from weightlessness).
ah, the answer snuck in there: sex, libido, pleasure in the physical world, buildups of random energy needing to be expended. had i been more sensible, would i have risked pregnancy (not mine, but yet my own), nights in new york on hooker's alley (going to a loaned apartment alone)?
true, i haven't given up entirely. alas, my last attempt at an affair a disaster. i couldn't swim blindly in a stormy sea, having faith i'd stay upright til i returned to land. no, no, no, as king lear shouted, no, no. these days all i want to do is daydream and be creativc. that's how my energy frittering itself away, not at full steam, lover on water-skiis.
you see, the less you know, the more fun you have, especially true in the physical world. you've all these ridiculous impulses you take seriously. my god, how i've moaned over an imaginary woman, dreamed of flying, gone a hundred miles an hour in a convertible with a drunk driver on a very dark night in indiana, throwing up all over the car-door without even knowing it. that was high-school.
see, as you advance in age, you naturally become careful. so and so, a good friend, ended up behind glass in a black coffin. jesus, she got killed by a baseball bat at a party, and i haven't even mentioned the great C word. lately, i've looked at the obits in the ny times. almost everybody toppling over younger than me.
and now i think, o boy, i don't have to stand in that rickety bus bounding along the worst dirt road in costa rica, for hours and hours. if i traveled now, i'd be a victim of tours, reclining in beds at the ritz, not even daring to pay for a call-girl, much less roaming the streets in search of miss Bad. even in my youth i didn't do that.
let me tell it like it is. learn a skill - and i mean damn well. play the ukulele, read tarot cards, learn to cut hair. go on the road and pay your own way. college becoming a sink-hole for the debts that bind. i love hanging out around all that intellectual stuff, but it didn't stop me from taking very stupid chances. i wish the same for you.
let's see, at 52 i wrote these notes: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/zen
