Being 70 Years Old
Wow! I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. I am the same me as I’ve always been. I do have more aches and pains as time passes, but I’m essentially the same on the inside. I can see myself at seven years old sitting on a pile of gravel, my knobby knees and long skinny legs on either side of a cement block – my grinding table. With a tiny cardboard box that might have held a necklace or bracelet long ago, and a flat stone for grinding, I spent the summer turning small granular, sparkly stones into “gold dust”. I was going to grind enough little stones to fill my sandbox. I didn’t get enough dust to fill the little box, much less a sandbox. That didn’t really matter. It didn’t upset me or make me give up. It was the doing of the thing that made me feel so great. So focused. My family life was a disaster, but while I sat on that pile of stones, nothing else existed.

I turned sixty a month after my mom passed away. I was an orphan. It was something that hit me on the head. I don’t know if a realization hitting one on the head can do brain damage, but I’ve never been the same since. I’m not damaged, but most assuredly I’m different. It was as if I woke from a deep sleep. Maybe you’ve heard the expression “I’ve had a day”. For me it was “I’ve had a decade”. I saw some things I didn’t want to see and had to face some things I didn’t want to face. And here I am. Seventy.
For the past three or four years I’ve thought I couldn’t do art anymore. Not that I didn’t want to. I just felt like whatever ability I’d had was absolutely, positively gone. Wrung out of me like dish water out of a rag. Art was my purpose. Losing my ability to do art meant I’d lost my purpose. According to Victor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, those who have no purpose, no meaning, die. And so I was prepared to die.

But Then!
Tonight I watched a couple of videos on YouTube about not being able to paint and on not being able to finish a painting/creation. It was quite a wake-up call for me. One person spoke of the inability to paint as being part of a story – the story of your life. She called her viewers/followers to think about what the plot for their life might be. Hm. I had to think about that. In fact, I’m still thinking about it. I want to figure it out, because the fact that she described it all so very well made me want to understand and benefit from her words. She spoke of how we are the heroine and perhaps the protagonist at the same time. She talked about the parts of all stories. There must be a conflict phase. Perhaps when an artist thinks they can no longer paint it’s just the conflict part of their story. She went on to say that characters do the most growing during the conflict. I felt a spark of hope at that.
I realize that I’m mixing tenses in my story here. This tiny little bit of story. I don’t care. It’s mine to tell and I’m renting this bit of internet space to tell it. Leave a comment if it bothers you more than necessary.
Okay. I’m in the conflict phase of my life. I’ve been divorced four years and its been four years of relief, total abandon (in a good way), going into debt (not a good thing), making good decisions and bad decisions, all of which may well be necessary in the larger picture. As my very good friend, Terri, just told me, if all the recent bad stuff hadn’t happened, we never would have met. More about that later.
The second video
Talked of giving up on art/writing/etc. Many famous people gave up on projects. DaVinci, for example. Mozart. The Greats! Not all things get finished. Selling one’s work validates the creative. What, of ourselves, we put into our work is what people spend their hard earned money to purchase. That feels good. Something you say with paint or words or music and the way you say it strikes a chord with the purchaser. They’ll hang that story on their wall for a long time, hopefully. When our work doesn’t sell, it fills us with doubt. For me, it was the act of deciding to return to traveling about in a camper, wanting to live a simpler and less expensive life. There would be no room for all of my unsold, but much loved works of art and I wasn’t going to rent a storage unit and have them bake to death in there. So I unframed them all, stuffed them into a leather portfolio, and threw the frames into the dumpster. From then on, I would confine my work to small projects that could endure in a camper and probably never be seen by anyone but me.
The man in the video said the first part of our life is outward, when we’re focusing on jobs, growing our lives and having families. The second part is the inward part, when we focus on ourselves.
Reflections of Life
In the newest video in the “Reflections of Life” series, on YouTube, the man being interviewed said that when you’re alone, doing things alone, your critical voice is louder. So true! “AMEN!” I wanted to shout. In the last couple of centuries, civilization has taken upon itself, change at a ludicrous speed. We went from the pony express to mail sent by jet. Perhaps soon, it’ll be mail sent by spacecraft or teleporter. Civilization is hurtling towards a precipice with no slowing down. Maybe all that change is bad, but maybe it’s good. We won’t know until we fling ourselves over the edge.
The past three years have given me pause. Time to reflect, to be mindful of the moments instead of the days. I’ve had lots of time to do so. My life in a small camper was nothing like life in a 6,000 square foot log home. I could clean my entire dwelling in minutes. I had everything I owned with me in that little space. If I bought something new, something else had to go. No alarm clock was needed. Dinner could be eaten at any hour. My path was like the path of an ant on fine dirt. All criss-crossing and seeming destination-less. Folks came and went in my life – sometimes for a day, sometimes for a season. It was a season and a day made up of moments. Moments lived and experienced slowly and deliciously. It was like getting to eat fine French pastries for every meal.
And then the bad thing happened!
That something happened in late October 2024 and nothing has been the same since. That’s a story for another day. The only thing that matters is where I am now. I’m seventy and I’m still me, but my feet are on a path I didn’t foresee. We shall see.
