Old

I passed her today.. walking to her mailbox.
Slowly.
She walked with a slight limp and the trudge of a person who has forgotten about sex.
Her sonic-white hair was cut short, like the ladies do.
I stopped pedaling, and began to coast.. I don't know why, but I couldn't look away from her, she was mesmerizing. As I neared her driveway, I could see everything about her: The wrinkled skin on her pale face, her thick glasses, her paunchy stomach, lines from cigarettes smoked many years ago.. an angel of oldness.
She was probably younger than I imagined; She looked a million years old.
Cankles add 10 years.

I avoid old people.
It is so convenient that we stick them away in special places when they get to be uncouth and embarrassing.
Out of sight out of mind.
Out of mind out of motion..
convenient. How sickeningly convenient.

This was a woman.
She was 8 years old once. She caught frogs in jars.
She was 17 once, she kissed a boy for the first time, and had butterflies in her stomach! She lay awake all night thinking about it.
She was 25 years old. She watched the sunrise over a lake, after spending the night camping with her children.
I can't look away, I am starring into her gray eyes, and I can see myself somewhere below the surface. I will be her.
god that is crazy! She was me, she did the same things I'm doing.. she played, and loved and cried, just like me.
She was young.

I would love to shoot an entire book filled with photos of naked elderly people.
To SEE them, to see those sagging bodies, and those veins, and those tired faces - It would do me good. Real good.


Flesh by Manabu Yamanaka (© 1995)

When life is in our faces, when every piece of existence is right there staring back at us.. we have nowhere else to look.
Show me the weakest, most frail, senile old man.. show me his ugly legs, and his wrinkly ass. Show me a fat old woman.. let me see her thin saggy breasts, let me stare at her.. soak in that unattractive part of life. The part of life we like to ignore and pretend will never come.
Suddenly I am not too busy to climb trees.
Suddenly I am not too concerned with the color of bathroom walls.
Suddenly I am not too worried about pension plans, or mortgages.
Suddenly I am not too distracted by fancy offices with large desks.
Suddenly I am not too interested in working 50 hrs a week.
Suddenly I want to move.
Suddenly I need to dance.
Suddenly I would love to make love and music and art and pizza.
Suddenly I want to live.

Young.
Let infirmity linger on my thoughts and in my head.. so that when wake up in the morning, I say to myself, "Oh My GOD!!! This day will be tasted!".
We are all beautiful, we are all wild, we are all awesome.

I love that that she was me only 60 years ago.
I pedal past, and I think she winks at me. ;)



(Andrew Tipton)