Sometimes I think my brain is empty

I read somewhere that persons in their late eighties are in a mid level beginning stage of mild dementia.  There are enough qualifying words there to soften the blow, I guess.  My husband insists that this is nonsense, that I am sharp as a tack.  Since we have never really made many friends here in Sarasota I have few persons with whom I can test my conversational skills and powers of intellectual invention.  I sit in my readers chair in my bedroom compulsively working my way through the TLS, LRB, Guardian, :Prospect, The New York Review, the New Yorker, and on and on, as well as novels, or books I think I should know about like Comey's memoir or "Fire and Fury", that scandalously crazy account of I guess it is more scandalously crazy life in the West Wing of a few months ago.  The fact of the matter is that I forget almost everything, certainly the details.  That to me smacks of dementia, my husband says no.  He claims that a I try to keep up with so many subjects that there is bound to be massive slippage of detail. Years ago I was driven to write several books about various aspects of classical literature.  Driven is certainly the right word, whatever pleasure I took from the writing, there is no doubt of the compulsion.  I have written a memoir, I wish I could write a novel or rather one that was worth publishing.  I wish I could write something, anything, but in fact I can't hold my subject matter intact enough to form a context. I guess that is a form of letting go which we could call old age.

so what"s it about?

I can't seem to get back into the groove.  once upon a time i started the day writing a little piece for this blog.  i still live by a schedule.  but i don't honor deadlines, don't recognize them if truth be told.  sit in my chair, read, forget what i have read.  i am not sure i should continue this.  not right now in any case.

Renewing Magazine Subscriptions

I have been at my computer sorting out which journals I need to renew.  It's not all that simple since the terms vary, i.e., longer terms and the charge is lower, and, for that matter, sometimes the renewal comes right on the heels of the initial subscription, and then there is the new practice of persistent automatic renewal with the proviso of cancellation if the subscriber happens to think of it. these various systems work to the advantage of the magazine: they can keep an eye on their profits down the road, but I am not sure that they are good with all kinds of subscribers, I mean those of my coevals who take on a slew of magazine subscriptions.  Alongside the New York Review, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, et aI I very much like having the great and good of England, the GuardianWeekly, The TLS, The Lrb, the Economist, Prospect Magazine, but there is a nervous suspicion growing in my gut that before too long my brain will have pretty much relinquished control of my purchases long term.  If I were signed up for automatic renewal, oh, the mess.  As it is, ever other Tuesday our cleaning woman arrives with the expectation that I will have "tidied" the area of my bedroom which constitutes my reading corner.  This entails my sorting through the reading materials and throwing out old stuff read more than once.  You need a clear mind for this and I am just now approaching the boundary line.  In fact I sense a definite relief when I do not renew a subscription; I suppose it's like an addict finally able to pout the pills down the toilet what you used to see in dramas about drugs.

So Much Time Has Passed

And it is mid April and I have celebrated, if that is nothing more than a cliche for the actual event, my eighty eighth birthday and am awaiting my husband's seventy fifth.  My father died, albeit in an auto accident, shortly after his fiftieth birthday.  My mother, half way into her sixty first year,  lay down on the sofa to watch the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV and was found dead there.  Of my six siblings one survives at 94, another at 92, and then there is me.  My trainer at the gym with whom I, as the expression goes, "work out" three times a week, says I am very strong as I perform on the various machines.  A neighbor lady who sometimes stops to give me a peck on the cheek if she spies me in the gym corroborates this estimation of my strength so maybe it is true.  Since I last composed a blog entry at the time of the presidential election I have suffered severe balance issues, as they say, which means in real language that I am incapable of walking for any great distance without a cane and I actually feel as though I were drunk and ready to topple over much of the time.  This is a great drag for someone who used to walk from my apartment at Ninth and Fifty Seventh up to a friend's for dinner at a Wesr End Avenue address somewhat south of 110th Street, and thought nothing of it.  So I have ended up sitting in a chair much of the day reading.  As an old timer I forget what I have read soon after or have a very garbled version to offer to those in my conversation.  As I seem to enjoy excellent health I may be around for some time to come.  I may attempt a daily entry again although perhaps it will be just too inane!

Now That I Am Fully Awake

I can't really post such nonsense when our country is threatened as never before in my lifetime.  It is all so eerily reminiscent of the early days of Adolph Hitler's taking the reins of government in Germany in the early thirties, I think particularly of staffing it with extreme partisans and the singling out of a segment of the population to demonize.  Just as I am too old to lift the peanut butter jar, I feel shuttered and stifled with senile inactivity. My daughter emails with exhortations to telephone my senators with my views.  I have never been political.  Do they actually take account of the calls?  Well, I will do it.

Housekeeping

In our condo apartment everything has its appointed place.  Efficient, neat, orderly.  My husband who was the department head of foreign language programs in a series of top notch public schools is especially good at keeping order, if I were more honest, I might say frighteningly so.  He has the demeanor of the high school hall monitor who checks to see if you have the pass to leave the classroom to use the toilet.  Though I am more sloppy, let's call it "more creative," my years of department chair have also kept me on the side of compulsive, although hubby sneeringly reminds me that I always had a secretary to keep order.  I am reminded of the bright and negative sides of this personality quirk? disorder? almost every morning when  I cover two pieces of toast with peanut butter for my breakfast.  Above the counter opposite the sink is a cupboard on the first shelf of which are stored a variety of containers used in stove cooking or storing foods once cooked.  Above that on the second shelf are various food stuffs used as they are, one of them being the jar of peanut butter.  Because we get the healthiest the oil is separated and needs to be worked in.  I just keep it tightly sealed and upside down and set it in a saucer with a paper towel in it in case of leakage.  This has been our practice forever, well, for a decade.  This morning I got up late and thus everything was seen in a new perspective.  And I had to ask myself: why does an old man who has minimal strength in his feeble old arms reach up much too high above his shoulder level to take hold of a somewhat greasy jar which is relatively heavy (since his spouse cannot bring himself to buy the smaller container and thus most expensive) from its place on a shelf irrationally  and unstrategically (probably not even a word) positioned to begin with?  Well, I can no more answer that than I can think to rearrange the items of the kitchen.  It is at these moments that I have those flash visions of the police breaking into the place after having been called by the neighbors because of the smell and discovering the utter disarray of items littering  every surface and crammed into every cupboard.

A Day In The Life Of A Blogger

Compulsive readers of my blog will note that none appeared yesterday and today I am writing several hours later than usual.  It is the season here in Sarasota, by which I mean that visitors seeking warmth descend on us.  Not so grim as I make it sound.  Granddaughter, great grandson, daughter, all good, but only the last actually stayed with us. How odd it is that I had so looked forward to house guests when we moved down here, but that enthusiasm has sort of gone.  I remember living in Cambridge and Rome and Brooklne and Hull, in houses and apartments mostly big, but even when small, and always crazy fun when guests were on hand.  What has changed?  Well, first of all, everyone is much older.  The genial host of forty five waving a bottle of wine in his guests' faces has surrendered to a wizened up old gentleman of eighty seven who stumbles from room to room, anxious over the appointments of the guest room, and myriad other hospitality concerns.  However, without question, the greatest test of hospitality nowadays is the problem of diet: gluten free food, lactose intolerance, vegetarianism, vegan diets, aversion to alcohol-- the list is endless.  Oh, carefree graduate school days when one ate what was set before him or her, and loved it, and drank up a storm and laughed oneself silly, and maybe smoked oneself into a higher consciousness, when sexual games and satisfactions so outweighed dietary requirements.  Aging hosts such as ourselves are exhausted by the time the guests arrive, the effort at being cheerful so burdens someone in his eighties, and I am ready for bed as I show them to their guest apartment and hear them exclaim that they will be over in half an hour.  I do not want to talk to anyone.  I do not want to catch up, I discover.  I just want to go to bed.