Landscapes

I've reached a point where I no longer find it a desirable exercise to try to remember how many years ago something took place - It happened - If any events in my life are important, in the grand scheme of things, the fact that they happened is what matters.

It's gotten harder to remember, to pinpoint times of events. Perhaps that's a sign of decline associated with age. Maybe it's just the way memory works as you add more and more and more as the years pass... also associated with age, it would seem. Probably both.

Viewing this revelatory moment as an accoutrement of wisdom would probably be wrongheaded. It's an annoyance to search my brain pan and come up empty as often as I do. It's that simple, I think.

Yet there are many times I succeed, and find it an unsatisfying exercise. Perhaps that's because so many reference points are so far advanced past the years I expected to be riding in flying cars, and those very future-world dates now sit so very long ago.

It occurs to me, now, as I'm writing this, that I've NEVER been good at such estimations, just as the reckoning of someone's age has never been a strong suit of mine. So maybe the only thing notable about all this is that I'm finally devaluing such skills.

And we'll harbor no notion of this being a surrender to the dulling of the edges, a sad and important decision that will lead to my being less and less sharp as I continue on the road to dotage. I'll read a book now and then, and will continue keeping my razor sharp mental reflexes honed by picking on people... and playing synapse challenging games of Tetris with continued regularity.

And down the road don't ask me when this moment of clarity occurred. I'll be lucky if I remember that it happened following a percocet, a big shot of Patron, and a Founders Centennial Ale at a Greg Dulli show.

Hey. It happens.

"Suck What?"
Robert Mitchum to Director John Heller on the set of "Eyes of War"
in the year 19-who-gives-a-shit?