11:33 a.m.
Sunday.
There is beauty in death and decay. A vibrant life. Youth. Productive. And now it's at a different stage of its life. It's not just because I just turned 60. I've been thinking about this my entire life. And now, I've reached a stage of my life that when I hear of someone dying, rather than wondering what they died of, the first thing I want to know is, how old were they? An actress that just died this week was 71, and I immediately did the math: 11 years more. When she was my age, she only had 11 years more. That's not very much at all. It's a pffft of a life.
We value youth; so much in this city of Boston, it's like one enormous kindergarten. And in our society, it's all about youth and beauty. If you're not young (and pretty), you're a nobody. A young man who we met this past time in Paris had lived in Miami for awhile, and he suddenly became serious and said, in Miami, it was all about how much money you had and how pretty you were. So, he returned to Paris.
And we compare ourselves to celebrities and people who think and act like they're celebrities. We are as individual as raindrops (notice I didn't use the cliche, snowflakes?) in a rainstorm.
The beauty of a garden in the throes of autumn. Spent. Still trying to push out fruit, but the energy just isn't there anymore. But it still doesn't stop it from trying. This garden didn't produce as much as last year's. So what? This summer was hotter, and it rained less than last year. This year's garden was this year's, and you can't compare it to last year's. Any more than you can compare people.
