"As We Get Older...." Looking at a New Decade

It seems that every year the month of January, that sometimes dreary period following the holidays, goes by more quickly.  And this year is no exception.  Of course for part of it, I was marching about in New Zealand, trying to keep up with daughter of longer legs and more speed.  Following my landing back in San Francisco I continued to battle a respiratory illness that I had carried with me for much of the trip (do I hear a "no fair" in response?), and thus many more days just blurred on by. And now we're staring right at the end of the month, which brings me to my granddaughters birthday (she'll be 15 I think - eek!), and the long uncelebrated anniversary of my marriage to my children's father.  And THEN, February arrives and delivers my birthday.  This year I will be 70 years old, which is a daunting sounding, daunting looking number, I must say!  There's no kidding ourselves now that we're not old.  Seventy is NOT the "new 50" or anything like that.  Yes, we are living longer, but the old body still ages with inexorable regularity.  Old is what we're becoming.

So I decided that before I gather friends and family about me to be celebratory about being 70, I would reflect on pieces of my journey, and on what I see are graceful consequences of becoming older, less powerful and more vulnerable. A doctor told me today that "as we get older, our systems don't respond to trouble (e.g. infection) as quickly..." and to top that off, they apparently continue to respond to infection even after the insult has actually ended!  That sounds a tad deranged to me, but sadly it makes some sense.  Things are wearing out.  But not my brain, I swear it!  Much of my life I fed myself knowledge in a voracious manner -- I read books a lot, big important books, I studied Shakespeare and Homer and James Joyce and even William Faulkner...... I became an ongoing student of literature.  And happily it has stayed with me.  I see it showing up in my writing all the time.  The other workout my brain got as I grew was traveling to far away places, and doing it a lot.  It all started when I was taken by my quixotic and crazy mother to live in Italy at age 11.  I was hooked from then on and have traveled with both the important men in my life and also traveled solo.  I think I have been looking for the understanding that we humans are all essentially connected and of the same heart, whether we live in India or Burma or Paris, France.  There were love affairs with both music and food, and these too had early roots, as I learned to cook in Italy, and to shop in markets where the most beautiful vegetables could be found, and I discovered the beautiful world of classical music because my grandmother pointed the way as she played her baby grand piano.  My heart still softens and melts at the sight of a perfect roast chicken or the sound of a Bach Invention.  I have been beautifully educated, and even though the body tires of performing, my mind (and heart) are still beating wildly because of how long I've trained them.

Speaking of training, I thought I could train myself to walk 100 miles in Africa amongst the elephants this summer, but I have discovered that this was more problematic than I had thought.  I have bad knees, bad ankles, and I am not an exercise freak who's going to spend every day of the week at the gym to condition myself to walk those 100 miles.  So I admit I cannot.  So what.  I can still journey to Africa and see the grand beasts in another kind of experience.  What we need to "get" as we march onward into our last phase is that while we have strong wills and great imaginations, they are no match for the impermanence of the body. Humility and letting go are necessary.  What else do I have to relinquish, I wonder?  Perhaps the notion that I will re-read William Shakespeare in a definitive way, take down from the bookcase my grandmother's little leather bound books, and sink into deep study.  Lovely idea, isn't it?  But...  I want to read new things, like Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, and Gawande's On Being Mortal, and any number of recent memoirs by sharp and interesting women.  And though I am attempting to re-read Anna Karenina, one of my most beloved novels, I may not make it.  As yummy as the idea is of losing myself in this glorious book, I somehow don't feel I have the time.  There are too many things pulling at me.  Like finishing the memoir I've spent the last two years working on and trying to market it (ugh to this last part!).  Like planning a trip to the Galapagos with some of my family.  Like going to Florence this spring to stay in an apartment alone - a luscious birthday gift to myself to make up for not going to Africa.  I used to think I would learn all of Bach's Goldberg Variations, but my wise teacher reminded me that I was in this business of learning Bach in order to have fun, be happy -- NOT to prove something.  He was right.  Learn the pieces you love and let go of ambition to be accomplished.

What I've been playing with here is the importance of relinquishing expectation, and keeping your vision clear and your intention honest.  How do you want your last decades to look?  Probably not engaged in a struggle to become something different.  You are what you are.  And it's good one you are (sounding a bit Irish here!).  And the threads of your very fortunate life are still wonderfully present -- the books, the food, the music, and of course your children and grandchildren of whom you're very proud.  And on top of that you have summoned the courage to tell a story of your life that peels away many layers, struggles with imperfect memory, and presents a pretty interesting character.  Not bad, eh?

Returning to my Work

It has been a week since I flew back to San Francisco from "down under," that pristine little country of New Zealand where they seem infinitely sensible, and I've spent the time trying to recover from a nasty respiratory illness and deep fatigue.  Happy to say that I'm finally back.
Though I toted parts of my manuscript with me on the trip, I got little done.  And that's o.k.  It was "vacation" after all!  This book I've been working on has been inhabiting my brain for a year a half now, and is not likely to dissipate with a few weeks of disregard.  I think I took the pages of writing with me because, like Joan Didion, there was a certain comfort to be derived from having my words on the page VERY close to me physically ... as though they would continually seep into my brain just because I had them close to the bed where I slept.  And because the words from the pages moved through time and space toward me, my brain could mysteriously and quietly work on them.  When I was in high school I remember putting the notes I'd written for a test under my pillow at night!  And I was always convinced that it worked in the end...
So I am returning to work on the revision of the chapters of this book - ten of them in all - and I am discovering what most writers already know:  the primary challenge is in the revision.  And revision is the hardest thing of all!  It seems that every time I return to a sentence or paragraph, I can think of yet a different way to write the same thing.  And I ask myself :  how long does all this go on?  The answer: until it stops happening.  Cardinal rules I'm trying to keep in mind:  tell unadulterated truth (even though you embellish here and there), keep it clean and honest, write the way you would tell the story, show as much as you can ... keep remembering that someone is sitting there about to read all these words, and try not to bore them.
One of my struggles is that I'm afraid I am too preoccupied with myself.  The subjects of my writing are so familiar and so interesting to me (Burma, Paris, India, and African elephants, for instance), that I forget that I may be circling endlessly and monotonously around the workings of my mind.  I guess part of this is true -- it is my own mind that I'm using to investigate and speak.  And, to give myself some pats on the back here, I think my patterns of thought are actually kind of interesting -- e.g.  looking into the hero's journey, seeing the parallels between literature and real life experience, finding a spiritual path in looking at art, letting go of pain and suffering, and investigating the Buddhist perception of non-duality...  I guess I figure these are thoughts that a number of readers out there might share.  Am I right?  I am looking too at the interconnection between the far past and the present day.  I ended up in India to examine duality and non-duality because I lived a life with a woman who forever set herself apart from the mundaneness of real life.  I went to Burma because I was seeking a deeper understanding of the Buddha's way.  I lingered in art museums in Paris because I was raised by a quixotic, selfish, but gifted painter who was driven to create beauty.  I walked slowly through the Killing Fields in Cambodia because I have been haunted by death.
Am currently struggling with a title for my book, my collection of pieces about travel and self-revelation.  Every single title I come up with is too long and convoluted.  I started out with:  Bowing Camels and Bloody Red Roses.  Then I added to that:  The Journey Out and Back.  Too bland, I realized.  And much later I thought about something like this:  Finding Myself in the Landscape of Memory.  Oh well ... it's still a work in progress.  I love the first part, because the image of the camels is poignant for me, pulled from a time in India where I entered a palatial hotel from the dirty chaotic streets of Rajasthan and colorfully dressed camels bowed to me  The roses are the ones at the grave of Frederic Chopin in Paris, and they conjure my tragic mother and her love of beauty and the color red.  Images are important here, but so are over-arching ideas...
Am reading a book about memoir writing called Handling the Truth, and the writer quotes Patricia Hampl who says, "True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world."  I love this.  And as I go back to revise and tune all these pages of memory, I am trying to make sure that there is as much of the world in there as there is myself.  And I am also noticing that my theme of discovery of self through travel is coming through pretty clearly.  And so, as long as I can stand to review my thoughts and purpose, I will be revisiting this work so I can bring it all forth as clearly and honestly as possible.
Happy New Year to all you who arrive here to read and think about this!

A Wise Young Place Far Away

I am sitting under an awning outside my villa at the Vintner's Retreat in Marlborough, New Zealand, gazing at a magnificent expanse of vineyards stretching out before me, and thinking, why this looks a lot like the Napa Valley : a lush valley surrounded by hills and beautiful vines everywhere, but no, this is a sometimes tropical, very green landscape where they drive on the wrong side of the road, where they speak in often unfathomable accents with the flat a's and e's, eat sausage rolls, and say, "jolly good," and "brilliant" for positive emphasis.  Very hospitable, very safe they are here.  Reminds me of traveling in Ireland where the goodwill and hospitality of the Irish washed over me and in no time caused me to become more cheery, genteel, and kind myself!

After staying in a house near Auckland for some days, and making numerous drives into the countryside around, we headed to the South Island for the next chapter of our visit.  Though plagued for days by a head cold that won't quit, I soldier on because I must, and have been responding right and left to the kindness that surrounds me.   My terribly clogged head has made understanding the Kiwis just a little harder than normal, but I don't mind asking people politely to repeat themselves.  I guess it comes with age.

The landscape here defies description.... I have been meaning to chronicle the visual experience and each time I was about to sit down with it, I paused, and hesitated, and in fact didn't move forward.  I think when it comes to capturing physical beauty I am (we are) daunted.  Language can be painfully inadequate when it comes to looking at the sublime.  But oh well, here I go:

The oceans and bays here have water that is various blues and greens and turquoises, and crystal clear.  Like the tropical waters I've floated on in the Caribbean... The forests are dark and lush, almost jungle like, with trees I've never seen before.  The mountains are significant and covered in green.  Lakes abound and again with a pristine beauty that surpasses most bodies of water I've laid eyes on.  Yet, here I sit at the edge of a vineyard and there are big pink rose bushes growing (not so foreign), and yesterday we saw eucalyptus and beautiful crops of silvery grey olives trees at the edge of one of the vineyards -- again something familiar. We took a wine tour yesterday with a beautiful warm woman called Faye who drove a cushy black BMW 700 with perfect air conditioning and took us from one end of the valley to the other as she narrated the inspiring details about the NZ wine culture.  They have been at it for only forty years and seem to be flawlessly at the top of their game, many of them producing organic wines.  She had worked herself in the vineyards when she was younger, and she knew her stuff.  The temperature hit the high 80's and we motored on through the intense heat, sipping way too much Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, but it felt glorious and perfect somehow!  

This land is lovingly cared for, diligently protected and nurtured by the people here.  This is a young country with a lot of earnest wisdom about conserving resources, and loving the environment.  They are a younger people than we are in America but they seem on some levels wiser and more present when it comes to the land, sea, and animals.  We took a boat trip on Queen Charlotte Sound the other day looking for dolphins, and viewing rare seabirds.  The island of Motuara is a bird sanctuary, one of many where birds close to extinction are helped to live without predators.  They are monitored and protected, the most incredible of which was the small (and rare!) blue penguin.  We were able to see them nesting in little especially constructed boxes as they molted and protected their eggs -- a matched pair -- husband and wife.  The ethereal grayish blue of their feathers that made you want to reach out and stroke it.  We stood in silence and just loved them instead...  We learned about Project Jonah which trains anyone to assist in the tending of stranded seals and small whales, and I bought a kooky reusable tea/coffee cup to remind me of their valiant mission.  

I thought that I would miss my usual cultural fixes when I came here, so conditioned am I to museums and art and heady learning, but I have found this refreshing and inspiring.  Yes, there is art, and yes, people do write and read books here, but it is the culture of stewardship of the land and all that comes from the land that is so interesting and moving.  From that come all the extraordinary wines, the quite sophisticated cuisine with bountiful seafood, the exotic carved green jade, and hard woods which are products of the enduring Maori culture, and most importantly:  the good will.

People drive fast here on that wrong side of the road - we've discovered that - but they are kind and generous and content in their lives from what I've seen.  A non fiction writer I've been reading lately described the state of contentment as "being in the right life (living in a place where you connect to a community, doing meaningful work, surrounding yourself with people you enjoy, respect, and love)."  Yes.  When you are doing earnest and righteous work and living in awareness of the present moment, this sort of happiness comes.  I believe this is going on here, and it is a very good thing indeed.