Hot Java - June 14, 2019
Long Beach, CA
Ruminations On Turning 60
Rumination #1: Meh
Rumination #2: Don't do it, it's a TRAP.
Rumination #3: I'm not particularly fond of any of the platitudes associated with aging as they only seem suited for ad copy in a Senior Living Condominium Community brochure or a TV commercial for Cialis:
60 is the new 40!
Age is just a number!
You'll always be young at heart!
They seem not only trite but also bear a sense of resignation to the fact that our days are numbered, but then again, aren't all our days numbered from the day we are born, albeit with a few additional commas in the early going. My soul for a few extra commas!
As I was driving up La Cienega Blvd at 3am this morning, long before the daily traffic becomes a bubbling miasma of frustration, tedium and rage, I feel a keener sense of ownership and enjoyment of the area I've called home for 38 years. Even if I haven't lived in Los Angeles proper since 2003 - I still feel like I am from LA. And it certainly feels infinitely more navigable in those hinky hours when most Angelenos are tucked away in their sleep pods, cryogenic duplexes filled with Instagram filters that keep everyone (except me) young forever. It put me in a good mood to whisk past the old landmarks of a more hopeful time, always mentally marking to see what's survived and what hasn't in the march of time.
The good mood extends to the fact that despite looking in the mirror and seeing my metamorphosis from an associate codger to a fully formed curmudgeon, my interior still beams with the exuberance of my youth; there's a new Bruce Springsteen album out (note to self: research marketing new vinyl album packaging as a potential car scent). My enthusiasm burns bright for the New York Yankees even if I never even heard the name Gio Urshela before three or four weeks ago. "Yesterday" looks like a wonderful new movie. I still wander the net-o-sphere looking for bands to fall in love with (Copper Viper anyone?) and get excited over weekend long music festival lineups I won't be attending. I still marvel and flirt with the "court and spark", the thrill of competitive game play, flying kites or writing songs or things that still burn as brightly in my heart as they did in 2009, 1999, 1989 and beyond. There never seems to be a shortage of what to look forward to. That's why it sometimes seems suicide is inconceivable - what musical ear worm might I miss if I lodged a bullet in my skull? Why, ALL OF THEM. No fair!
I was thinking about when we are we kids. We receive so much attention, kindness and support from adults for our potential - without ever having to give anything back. We must feel very special in that adoration. We are held up, held out, held in esteem. And all that's required of us is to beam with pride on the precipice of our limitless futures and the good fortune of our youth. It is only when altruism kicks in that we begin to mature enough to realize that this is a currency that we will pay forward to the next generation and that it will become scarcer when we get older. When we can drink in the adoration and let much of spill to the floor in our youth, by the time we are 60, we scoop even an errant drop to quench the thirst of that long lost time when we were the apples of others' eyes. And I suppose that's as it should be. Consider a certain 72 year old man who still feels the way we did when we were kids and how poorly that suits an older human being.
It's all ruminations to be sure and I'm pretty certain I'm not the first person who doesn't want to get old because it doesn't look as pretty as youth does (said the man with a six inch surgical scar slicing his upper half from his lower half).
"Look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through.
Looking into their eyes, I see them running too."
-Jackson Browne "Running on Empty"
I don't really mind working as a chauffeur. Today I got to stand in front of the old rock-n-roll Hyatt (now the Andaz) and imagine Mick Jagger tossing a club chair out a window of the fourth floor into the pool. There were even trashy people smoking cigarettes and speaking in foreign languages standing outside. I admired the window photos of the old Tower Records and an Eddie Money gold disc and continued to take mental notes of what has survived the endless re-imagination of LA and what hasn't. How has that ridiculous wig store at La Cienega and San Vicente outlasted Schwab's and Virgin Megastore and the 94 other restaurants that couldn't survive at 8000 Sunset?
Sure I chauffeur people of privilege all day and that can often make me ponder about where I went wrong but I suppose every dinosaur wonders how they ended up in the La Brea tar pits at some point. Wouldn't I rather be planning another amazing sojourn around the country? Sure but I am also unwilling to feel the needle of economic insecurity standing poised at my vein to inflict its cruel searing pain. I drive by too many homeless encampments every day to have a healthy enough fear to not concern myself if I miss a twi-night double header featuring the Hartford Yard Goats. Mark Berg can fill me in on the final score, I suppose.
"I owe I owe so it's off to work I go" says the license plate frame to its roommate "honor student at WTF High School".
In our youth we have an inexhaustible fount of time.
We are taught to trade some/most of that time for money.
We trade that money for a bunch of junk and then turn around and trade that junk for either more expensive junk or less expensive junk depending on how the cookie crumbled.
Then we trade ALL OF IT in for a hole in the ground and shovels full of dirt on our decaying heads.
What an odd exchange.
Before I lose my sense of smell I want to sniff one more freshly unwrapped vinyl album.
Preferably one with a crisply bent gate fold and a full lyric sheet.
Long Beach, CA
Ruminations On Turning 60
Rumination #1: Meh
Rumination #2: Don't do it, it's a TRAP.
Rumination #3: I'm not particularly fond of any of the platitudes associated with aging as they only seem suited for ad copy in a Senior Living Condominium Community brochure or a TV commercial for Cialis:
60 is the new 40!
Age is just a number!
You'll always be young at heart!
They seem not only trite but also bear a sense of resignation to the fact that our days are numbered, but then again, aren't all our days numbered from the day we are born, albeit with a few additional commas in the early going. My soul for a few extra commas!
As I was driving up La Cienega Blvd at 3am this morning, long before the daily traffic becomes a bubbling miasma of frustration, tedium and rage, I feel a keener sense of ownership and enjoyment of the area I've called home for 38 years. Even if I haven't lived in Los Angeles proper since 2003 - I still feel like I am from LA. And it certainly feels infinitely more navigable in those hinky hours when most Angelenos are tucked away in their sleep pods, cryogenic duplexes filled with Instagram filters that keep everyone (except me) young forever. It put me in a good mood to whisk past the old landmarks of a more hopeful time, always mentally marking to see what's survived and what hasn't in the march of time.
The good mood extends to the fact that despite looking in the mirror and seeing my metamorphosis from an associate codger to a fully formed curmudgeon, my interior still beams with the exuberance of my youth; there's a new Bruce Springsteen album out (note to self: research marketing new vinyl album packaging as a potential car scent). My enthusiasm burns bright for the New York Yankees even if I never even heard the name Gio Urshela before three or four weeks ago. "Yesterday" looks like a wonderful new movie. I still wander the net-o-sphere looking for bands to fall in love with (Copper Viper anyone?) and get excited over weekend long music festival lineups I won't be attending. I still marvel and flirt with the "court and spark", the thrill of competitive game play, flying kites or writing songs or things that still burn as brightly in my heart as they did in 2009, 1999, 1989 and beyond. There never seems to be a shortage of what to look forward to. That's why it sometimes seems suicide is inconceivable - what musical ear worm might I miss if I lodged a bullet in my skull? Why, ALL OF THEM. No fair!
I was thinking about when we are we kids. We receive so much attention, kindness and support from adults for our potential - without ever having to give anything back. We must feel very special in that adoration. We are held up, held out, held in esteem. And all that's required of us is to beam with pride on the precipice of our limitless futures and the good fortune of our youth. It is only when altruism kicks in that we begin to mature enough to realize that this is a currency that we will pay forward to the next generation and that it will become scarcer when we get older. When we can drink in the adoration and let much of spill to the floor in our youth, by the time we are 60, we scoop even an errant drop to quench the thirst of that long lost time when we were the apples of others' eyes. And I suppose that's as it should be. Consider a certain 72 year old man who still feels the way we did when we were kids and how poorly that suits an older human being.
It's all ruminations to be sure and I'm pretty certain I'm not the first person who doesn't want to get old because it doesn't look as pretty as youth does (said the man with a six inch surgical scar slicing his upper half from his lower half).
"Look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through.
Looking into their eyes, I see them running too."
-Jackson Browne "Running on Empty"
I don't really mind working as a chauffeur. Today I got to stand in front of the old rock-n-roll Hyatt (now the Andaz) and imagine Mick Jagger tossing a club chair out a window of the fourth floor into the pool. There were even trashy people smoking cigarettes and speaking in foreign languages standing outside. I admired the window photos of the old Tower Records and an Eddie Money gold disc and continued to take mental notes of what has survived the endless re-imagination of LA and what hasn't. How has that ridiculous wig store at La Cienega and San Vicente outlasted Schwab's and Virgin Megastore and the 94 other restaurants that couldn't survive at 8000 Sunset?
Sure I chauffeur people of privilege all day and that can often make me ponder about where I went wrong but I suppose every dinosaur wonders how they ended up in the La Brea tar pits at some point. Wouldn't I rather be planning another amazing sojourn around the country? Sure but I am also unwilling to feel the needle of economic insecurity standing poised at my vein to inflict its cruel searing pain. I drive by too many homeless encampments every day to have a healthy enough fear to not concern myself if I miss a twi-night double header featuring the Hartford Yard Goats. Mark Berg can fill me in on the final score, I suppose.
"I owe I owe so it's off to work I go" says the license plate frame to its roommate "honor student at WTF High School".
In our youth we have an inexhaustible fount of time.
We are taught to trade some/most of that time for money.
We trade that money for a bunch of junk and then turn around and trade that junk for either more expensive junk or less expensive junk depending on how the cookie crumbled.
Then we trade ALL OF IT in for a hole in the ground and shovels full of dirt on our decaying heads.
What an odd exchange.
Before I lose my sense of smell I want to sniff one more freshly unwrapped vinyl album.
Preferably one with a crisply bent gate fold and a full lyric sheet.
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