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!