It's News to Me

Happy Birthday!

Reaching 65 is a seminal event. It is not only a marker of time, but it is accompanied by a change in perspective. I saw the end from 60--and whether you make that transition from 60 or 65 it is a sea-change that colors your thoughts and feelings.

Your experiences are henceforth tainted with the subtle awareness that there are only a few similar experiences left to you. A sunset, sunrise, Christmas, drink with a friend, conversation with a loved one, morning cup of coffee--each one could be the last. Not in some figurative sense, but literally.

It is not being drole to consider this reality, but it is part of the move to a new stage in your life--the realization of the value of the little things you have taken for granted. I think it is a good thing and makes the last 20 years a fertile opportunity for experiencing the richness and beauty of life.

Some of the old rhetorical questions about,»what would you do if you knew you only had a year to live?» are no longer exercises in speculation.

So, you've burned up 65 years and now you have 15-20 left. Your faculties will gradually weaken and your mobility will be reduced--what do you do now to make it all worth while? How do you punctuate the last sentence?

Actually I believe the next signpost is 100!! More and more Baby Boomers and those close by are making it to 100, in fact it is the fastest growing segment of our U.S. population. So I hope you plan to use the next 35 years in a way that brings you joy, health, love and pleasure.

Happy Birthday friend.

Happy birthday Perry.....treat yourself to something fun today.....steak & lobster?

Best, David Steele
Indianapolis

I dunno, Perry. 100 would be a pretty big milestone, and that's a ways off yet. Oops, I see now that others have said pretty much the same thing. In any case, congrats on making it this far, and may the next couple or few decades surprise you.

Pleasantly, I mean. Not in a way that'd make your old ticker explode.

I'm very sorry Perry, but I voted no on the 65+ property tax issue =p

Congrats on the last «legal» milestone crossed, spend those 401k's like crazy. I don't mean for this to make you sound old, but thinking about the fact you were born just before pearl harbor really impresses me. Needless to say, you've seen a lot!

As you know, I am a Dylan Thomas fan--you once gave me a book entitled, «The Life of Dylan Thomas,» which I still have. On my birthday, I always read one of his poems--«Poem in October,» which I have copied below. It presents the emotional experience of life's transitions and evokes the sadness of lost innocence. It expresses hope for one who can consolidate the aesthetic experiences and the disappointments into a spiritual optimism. Read it for the sound, the rhyme and the rhythm.

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In the rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Follow the link. Scroll down to Twentieth Century poems and click on number 9.

http://www.wwnorton.com/nto/noa/audio.htm

Congratulations on the 65th. You are just getting started. Try 77 and counting.

I enjoyed your blog--and at forty years old see how we live in a youth dominated society. I often wonder what it would be like to have experienced the 60s/50s and before, it seems as if we are in a very cynical time. As I turn 41 next week I realize that life is finite as I will be retired way before 50. Good Blessings to come your way