Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

"No one here gets out alive."


No One Here Gets Out Alive
for release 09-30-05
Washington D.C.

Having the realization that your time on this earth is limited makes an incredible difference in the way you live your life. There are numerous ways that this realization can occur. You can be faced with a serious or life threatening health problem, narrowly escape death by accident or injury, watch your friends or contemporaries die in arbitrary ways like OD's or car wrecks. Or......you can reach the age of fifty.

I have noticed that among my generation of baby boom-booms, this is when it finally sinks in. You are not immortal like you thought you were when you were twenty. You realize that this body and this life are temporary affairs. In other words, it's time to get down to business.

I had a version of this realization early in life. When I was seventeen I had a job dipping ice-cream at a local emporium. After a year of working there I started having dreams about working my life away on somebody else's time clock. LeRoi Jones and Allen Ginsburg and Jim Morrison were in my head too. One day I decided. I was never going to punch another man's clock again. I had too much to accomplish and enjoy in this life to be, as Morrison so bluntly put it, "Sellin' my hours for a handful of dimes."

For the most part, I have managed to keep that promise to myself and have survived on my cunning or my ingenuity or my skill and worked for myself.

But at about the age of of fifty, most people have a moment with themselves in the shower or in front of the mirror and realize that the vehicle is deteriorating. It might have been a nimble little machine some years ago but now it is like a Camry with about 200,000 miles on the odometer. The tires are a little bare and the transmission is making this sound.

So the thought occurs to you, not the same thought that you had years ago that I can do anything, live forever and the whole world is waiting for me, but the thought that your time is finite and that you had best do what you really want to do, and do it now.

I have watched this, for want of a better term, Midlife Crisis, infuse people with a new dedication and resolve. You see people adopt a new commitment to their passions. Those that haven't touched a brush in years go to the art supply store and max their credit cards buying paints and easels and canvases and you see musicians re-stringing the guitars that had gathered dust for years and poets tuning their language and meter and executives giving up jogging and buying Harley-Davidsons.

I had this realization when I was about fifty. I am, after all, a member of my generation. I suddenly understood, more completely than when I was seventeen, that there was no time left for anything but the things that brought joy to my life. All people or occupations or activities that didn't bring me joy were pointless and a waste of my precious time.

Then the question inevitably arose. I had to ask myself, "What are the things that bring you joy, Lightning Rod?"

After an intense ten minutes of reflection I answered my own question. The things that bring me joy in life are pretty simple: Making love, making music and writing. (but to paraphrase Dotty Parker, I actually hate writing, but I love having written.) I also like to drink and smoke and socialize and in general do whatever I goddam well please.

The Poet's Eye sees that mortality is a blessing and also that time is short. So, whatever it is that puts joy in your life, do it now.


"Your ballroom days are over, baby
Night is drawing near
Shadows of the evening crawl across the years
Ya walk across the floor with a flower in your hand
Trying to tell me no one understands
Trade in your hours for a handful dimes
Gonna’ make it, baby, in our prime"
----Jim Morrison (dead at 27)

I'm sorry. I don't buy it. I'm going to live for a long long time no matter how many of my friends have died or narrowly escaped death, no matter how ill I am, and no matter how many canvases I bought. So there!

But I'm also a realist.

Life IS short.
So, I eat dessert first.

why dwell on it?
all ya have is right now
and that's enuff to deal with,
although when i was sick
i was feeling my mortality on the line
now i think it was the well water was bad when
we were living in the country
i felt poisoned...................

i may be 52, but it doesn't mean i know any better. It's still all a mystery. But one thing age is bringing....each moment seems to swell up like a balloon. The time it takes to look into a person's eye to make real contact zooms into immediacy. Every second becomes important - whether i do nothing but vegetate or delight in the circulation of my breath.

Now is a trip.

as Curtis Mayfield or even the Dylan sing in People Get Ready : 'don't need no ticket, you just get on board'


good eye, L-rod

I have noticed that among my generation of baby boom-booms, this is when it finally sinks in. You are not immortal like you thought you were when you were twenty. You realize that this body and this life are temporary affairs. In other words, it's time to get down to business.

That is too bad. Did you think you were immortal, or just invulnerable, nothing could kill you?


I think it hit me about twelve or thirteen. The feeling that this is it. I figured I had a good shot at seeing the new millennium. I figured anything after that was borrowed time.

that there was no time left for anything but

… Pissing, my bladder was so much more elastic at fifty. Now. Now it is brittle as peanut shells. I can’t tell you how long it takes me to squirt the dirt. I spend half my days and nights standing at the commode dribbling.

Eventually I may install a catheter.

So, whatever it is that puts joy in your life, do it now.

Yes good advice.

I have joy in being alive. When I am no longer alive, (ding dong most sincerely dead)

I got know fear of the flames beneath my feat. Unless I am being buried over a burning coal mine in Pennsylvania. Quantum reincarnation of wave forms. Photons have consciousness they say, the light within me just keeps on shinning, somehow, somewhere.

As a fellow member of the baby boomer crowd, LR, I hear ya. As trite as it may sound the old adage is very true… youth is wasted on the young.

What once shone in my eyes I now see in the eyes of many members of the younger generation. The idealism, their ‘causes’… fresh, like they were the first ones to discover them. But you know, with the high mileage comes the experience gained from places traveled. We’ve discovered, through trial and error, which roads have the potholes and which roads will mire us in mud up to our axles with tires spinning, going nowhere.

I spent the years of my youth trying to push the string before it finally penetrated my thick skull that one simply cannot push string anywhere. Before I realized my inflated sense of self was simply that… inflated. Before I realized that I didn’t have to impress or be impressed (although it is always a very pleasant surprise when I am!)

So this old chassis doesn’t ovulate anymore. The upholstery sags a bit here and there and there a few well-worn creases where there used to be none. I no longer have to concern myself over whether someone might bump into it with a shopping cart. And I can take the dirt road, enjoy the scenery, and not worry about getting dusty or getting a rock chip or two in the paint.

I still don’t always do what I damn well please because there are others in my life that deserve my consideration. But if I do have to take a detour that I normally wouldn’t have chosen of my own volition, then I just try to pack accordingly. I’m here for the ride and I’m damn well going to do my best to appreciate it and enjoy it… every minute of it.

nannabug,

Just wanted to say thanks for reading and welcome to Studio Eight. You are not a total stranger to me. Your writing is a pleasure.

yeah, it's too bad that about the only way we can get humility is to be humiliated

You are not a total stranger to me.

Nor are you, LR. Thank you for the kind welcome. Not sure how I'll fit in around here. Probably like the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Suppose one could always whittle away the corners just a bit.

not to worry, nanna

we are all square pegs in round holes around here

Hi nanna!!! *waving*
Good to see you here!
Welcome!

holes r us