Losing One's Ambition and Regaining It

I note this week a visit to the bank where I was mistaken for my wife's father.

I'd already achieved a seniority beyond years when our table of four at IHOP was granted an unbidden senior discount presumably based on my presence, spoiling a future long-cherished low-price meal at Bob Evans I was saving for my 55th birthday.

These days even the Flash, the original, mind you, Jay Garrick, the speedster who calls everyone 'son' and wears the Sancho Panza wash basin over his greying temples, betrays a certain defensiveness like when he said recently, "Experience makes a man more effective, not less, plus you're allowed to take afternoon naps."

Not so much, however, while you're still working, recalling, for example, the late night-no dinner meeting strategy, Elaine employed at J. Petermans, to force Morty Seinfeld out.

Age obsession is nothing new. According to Roman poet, Horace, circa 23 B.C:

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage.

At this point in time, I consider myself well shoved by titterers.

So, what to do next?

A recent New Yorker article by Ben McGrath featured former Major Leaguer Lenny Dykstra, who in contrast to myriads of his compatriots who died broke, "wants to encourage athletes in their prime to set aside a half-million dollars a year in a customized retirement account, thereby insuring cash for life." I suppose that's all well and good, though it goes against the grain of our family tradition to 'buy high, sell low.'

On the other hand, in church last Sunday, while I was pondering the Book of Dykstra, the preacher serendipitously reminded the congregation that Jesus said, 'do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.' I've already evidently achieved such a higher degree of spirituality, since after building a substantial wardrobe over many years by buying $3.00 shirts off winter-clearance sale racks, folks have been telling me for a good long while, it doesn't look like I care what I wear.

Yet another Roman, Cicero, points to a middle way:

Hours and days, and months and years go by;
the past returns no more,
and what is to be we cannot know;
but whatever the time gives us in which to live,
we should therefore be content.

Many ancients were apparently greatly concerned about becoming ancient. I'm taking contentment to heart, doing some moderate planning, but certainly not on the Dystra plane where he's Gulfstream and I'm coach. I informed our financial advisor the other day, though I respect a certain need to save, it doesn't make sense to die with all the money still invested in mutual funds.

In that spirit, I just bought a GPS so when I venture out, I won't get lost, or, at least, less confused than usual. We're also building a screened-in porch so I won't have to venture out at all.

I'll be content to roost, overlooking the untamed steep slopes of our wild septic field, encounterning old and new authors alike, and trying to adequately convey in these pages, what Daniel Jenkins, a philospher at the Community College of Baltimore County, describes, as "a wonder about everyday objects, prompting an analysis of basic concepts about human beings and our relationships with the world." That should take up more than a few years.

I've just discovered, for one, the Irish poet WB Yeats, whose work, according to Seamus Heaney, "achieved its indomitableness through his devotion to style, and his conviction that by remaking his style he could remake his self."

It must not have been easy since Yeats himself wrote in Adam's Curse:

A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

I'm ready to stitch as long as my fingers are able to sew and the aspirin holds out.

Will retirement seem like one long vacation?

Of those places where extended leisure time is highly valued, Cyril Connolly writes, "on holidays Venice stopped work by law and there were plenty of holidays. And everyone went to church - another reason for the well-being. Nobody thought that life ended with death - an idea more depressant of vigor and serenity than any known to the mind . . . Even Casanova believed in God and prayed all his life."

Casanova might have been well served to move to Santiago, Chile, where the mayor's been handing out free Viagra lately to seniors, proclaiming, "an active sensuality improves the overall quality of life."

I don't know about that; I'm savoring the sedentary prospects of porch existence, where they'll undoubtedly be more reading than sex, but, you know, thanks to our friendly pharmacist, the latter can't be entirely ruled out.