Life as a documetnary

The question for today's One Minute Writer was "If a movie were made of your life what genre would it be?" I knew immediately, it would be a documentary and it would discuss my four stages [or four lives as I think of them]. They are prototypical in Eastern philosophic thought -- although those ancients didn't really count women in their philosophies.

First was physical maturing and education, roughly to age 22. Thereafter came the nest building/procreation phase that included marriage, children, community involvement. That ended at 40. Then came a period of career/intellectual life -- largely writing plays while working to support myself, this one was about 25 years. And now I am in the fourth phase which is partly creative but also the period given to intellectual accommodation to the fact that life does not last. The period of understanding what it was about, what I accomplished [and didn't], what my life has been about and is currently about.

Like the Tibetan mandala in the illustration, I have a sense of these four divisions within the circle that is life, the circle that is the world. I have not always felt balanced, nor do I always feel that now. But when I take a long view -- when I'm asked to define a life I feel I have, in my totally individual way lived [and am living] the quadratic stages of life. If there were a documentary, my own life would be only one illustration of the many ways these four stages are lived and understood.

Standing back to take a broad view like this occasionally is very grounding and satisfying. I was at a birthday party this afternoon for someone turning 47; among the group were children and young people just starting the nest building stage. The four quadrant were represented. Of course, the subject was not discussed as it almost never is outside of formal settings. I find it comfortable to represent the oldest segment.

Earthquakes

The world seems smaller and I pay attention to more and more of the news. I have corresponded for some months, both in an e-group and by snail mail with a woman in New Zealand who lives only a few miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that did great damage to Christchurch a couple of weeks ago. For even longer I have been reading the wonderful thoughtful blog of a man in Japan -- who fortunately lives well up a mountain. Yesterday's enormous earthquake and tsunami seemed all the more immediate because I could connect someone I've never met but whose thoughts I've enjoyed. Someone he cares a great deal for was a subject of concern as communications were impossible. Later in the evening my daughter, who lives int eh Bay Area told me that California's coastal highways were partly closed due to the warning of a counter tsunami. I've just read that they got high waves so far four people have been caught up in them but no deaths.

The so called Rim of Fire in the Pacific is unstable as has been known for a long time. The earth shifted four inches on its axis due to this newest earthquake. We live on a planet with geological forces beyond anything we can control. When one makes connections, even one-way connections, like simply reading the blog of an interesting writer, it is the nature of our natures to be concerned, to pay attention, to think about fragility and unpredictability. The corollary seems to me to be that appreciation of the positives of our own situation become more precious and treasured.

The sun is out today, after a day of rain, my little piece of the world looks beautiful and the crows are out calling to one another. The beginning of spring is a week away. For me it looks like a lovely day ... but through the scrim of news I know that in many places in the world, [e.g., Japan after the quake, Libya during it's insurrection] it is a day of despair. I've learned to balance what I will do with my small life today with what I know others must do with theirs.

Elder Abuse, Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney's testimony about the elder abuse he has suffered may be news only to me -- since I don't see television I'm often behind. But I do read blogs and I just saw on the Sage's Play blog the information. She quotes: Rooney's emotional testimony put the issue of elder abuse on the national stage in a heartrending way. "For years I suffered silently. I didn't want to tell anybody. I couldn't muster the courage, and you have to have courage," Rooney said. "I needed help and I knew I needed it. Even when I tried to speak up, I was told to shut up and be quiet."

He told the committee, "My money was stolen from me, by someone close. My money was taken and misused. When I asked for information, I was told that I couldn't have any of my own information. I was literally left powerless." An April 5th court hearing will investigate charges Rooney is bringing against his stepson. The court filing claims that the stepson withheld food and medicine, acted intimidating and verbally abusive, and abused Rooney financially."

Rooney is 90 years old, he's a small man as we all know, but always seemed to have a lot of guts. But getting older, as they say, is not for wimps. And when there is money, there's temptation. I don't know about Rooney but a lot of actors preferred not to deal with money and had a manager. They never learned many financial basics, the successful ones always assume they'll have plenty of money.

Not many people think they will live to 90. Also many older women who always depended on their husbands' financial caretaking are very vulnerable to both financial and physical abuse. This is profoundly saddening but I am happy Rooney screwed up his courage and spoke out.

Social People ...

"We are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals who form relationships." David Brooks wrote this in his column in today's NYTimes and I've been pondering the difference for a few hours now. The emphasis here is not on our cherished and sometimes insecure individuality but on the fact that we are by nature social animals. We grow up in families because when we are born we cannot survive without caregivers. We are not like baby turtles who emerge from eggs laid weeks earlier and who are wholly prepared for life at the moment of our emergence.

On the basis of those social relationships in our earliest years we begin to recognize our individuality and our ability to form new relationships -- and sometimes our inability to form satisfying ones. Recent psychology about autism and about sociopaths tells us that some children are handicapped in their earliest relationships -- possibly because of an innate brain disorder. As we all know, before psychology many thought some children are simply born bad or evil. Handicapped usually means deficient in some way and a child may be born with various handicaps. We have stopped leaving those obviously handicapped children out to be devoured by wild animals as Oedipus was because he was born with a club foot.

None of this is what Brooks was writing about. I really didn't follow his financial commentary this morning, I got stopped by thinking about the many people who have trouble with adult relationship -- possibly the majority of people -- which is a sad thing to think about. The subject is a big one.

Sometimes it happens that something I read presents a question. As it did today. I don't have an answer; I have only a growing set of questions. Being a person who is not working by society's definition [although I am working by my own definition] I have time for pondering. That may even be one of the "jobs" of those of us in the upper percentages of the age groups.

Gallup Poll and Happiness

I wrote about happiness recently but I'm going to write about it again. Some days ago my daughter told me she had answered a Gallup poll questionnaires about happiness and that she felt her answers may have been only partially correct as they were really off the cuff -- quick answers to quick questions. This made us wonder about the validity of the poll's results -- a question we both had anyway. Doesn't understanding of your emotional state take more than a top of the head reply to a set of questions? I have the profoundest skepticism about every sort of "epidemiological" research result -- that X% of people who drink green tea are X% healthier than drinkers of coffee, that sort of thing.

Anyway, the Sunday NYTimes had a half page of the Editorial Section on the most recent Gallup poll results about Americans and happiness. It became confusing whether the article was about "happiness" or "well being". Well being seems to be equated to family income -- usually at least $60,000 per individual per year. The map of the US with the article showed that we, here in Cape Cod, were among the most "comfortable." Duh! Those of us who live here know this is an affluent area. We know we have homeless and unemployed, we know there are social problems [like a drug-reated murder about a mile away from here last weekend]. But the people I see socially are affluent. I am about to work on my income tax statement this evening and I can see by the numbers that I am not in the affluent group -- and yet, because of circumstances I won't go into, in fact, I am affluent both financially and emotionally. Furthermore I am happy. But I am not happy because of affluence and thus I belie the conclusions of the Gallup people. I am healthy, I am a senior citizen who is at ease with the life I have lived and the life I am living. I am eager to get up every morning and do the things I have in mind to do that day. Most of them are creative expressions do not cost much money.

Frankly, I do not believe in polls. I think most of them exist for business reasons and most of those reasons have to do with commerce -- what can someone sell me. That doesn't cut much mustard with a senior, although it seems to be important to those who are younger ... but maybe not to my daughter who was only one of several million the Gallup people talked to. Happiness is a personal definition not a conglomerate of however many numbers of interviews. Ant it actually doesn't have a dollar figure attached.

Testosterone Times

Two films in two days so heavy on the effects of male testosterone I feel truly assaulted by the vicarious energy coming off the screens. Friday the documentary film class showed Murderball, a film about paraplegic men who play what they call wheelchair rugby [it looks more like mayhem on a basketball court] in international competition in the Special Olympics. The focus was the fierce competition between the US and Canadian teams. The game is fast, mean and nasty. The men are amazing to those of us who go all mushy in the middle when we think of paralysis for the rest of one's life. These guys are living more vividly and fully than 90% of their cohort. They even had a whole sequence talking about how they are still able to enjoy sex -- emphasis on "how". Some personal stories were told which were dramatic and both warm and full of challenge. It was definitely not a downer; it was saying: yes, you can have a whole life even when paralyzed, even without limbs.

Lsat night's movie shown here in the community room of our apartment complex was one I missed a couple of years ago, Oliver Stone's, Wall Streett, with Michael Douglas reprising his Gordon Gecko role. Updated with the most recent Wall Street crash, there were many scenes of men on trading floors and in board rooms with the testosterone pumping and voices shouting, a beautiful and scary motorcycle race between two hotshots. The story was softened with a father-daughter conflict which left me wondering, must it always be the women with the irrational emotional ethics? And then the trendy gooeyness about the baby in utero that softens the hardest of hearts. Watching Michael Douglas was a great pleasure, so was watching Eli Wallach as a slightly daffy old geezer who hadn't lost any of his financial insight and meanness.

I think about both and simply mutter, "biology, baby!" It sells at the box office, and it's wrecked the global financial world -- ordinary Americans are poorer, and so are people in far corners of the world we don't even know exist.

Consciousness Raising

Seniors are mostly absent from short stories and those in them are stereotypes -- or so I am finding. I'm taking a course in short story in which we are reading through two current books of "Best" short stories, three stories per class. We have lively discussions among the students, all over 55, most in the 65 to 75 range. Today's stories were the first so far -- after reading 12 other stories -- in which older people played important roles. One was a stories by William Trever, called by one critic, "our best short story writer." The older man in it was a cripple who could do nothing but tightly control the money spent by high live-in cousin/housekeeper [and she managed to cheat him -- and possibly murder him at the end of the story]. Not a shining example of old age.

The other was the "Valitudinarian," by Joshua Ferris, a highly acclaimed 30-something writer. The man had just retired so we assume he's about 65. He is a helpless couch potato who does nothing but complain of his health and feel sorry for himself. He has a neighbor lady who seems to have no life beyond her little yappy dog -- and later caring for our hero. The writing is broad, very witty, very clever and very broad. The plot is slender and not entirely believable. My classmates enjoyed the humor as did I when I first read it. But the guy has that slightly nasty satiric tone that I know well from writers I have met who depend upon their wit to win accolades and publications. One women called the piece a "spoof".

Both spoof and satire are attitudes of a writer who knows that he is drawing in broad strokes for the sake of humor. From all I could find about Ferris on the net, I don't believe his attitude toward his work is one of satire. I believe he was applying his wit to what he believes older people to be like -- that, in my book, is not only shallow, it is insulting and it deserves to be called ageist. I pointed this out and finally the conversation turned to the fact that older people are rare in short stories. At last someone said "we need some stories about older people."

I didn't start a revolution but in reading attitudes but I planted a seed of criticism. For this room full of seniors to accept these pictures without awareness of the messages inherent in the writing of younger people is not different from the way women accepted portraits of their gender in literature up until the 1960s when feminist studies came into academe.