Fuck It I'm 50

As I accept the fact that I am going to be reading excerpts from my writings on Tuesday evening I am thinking more and more about what I am doing and what it means to be 50 for me. Of course that shifts around on a daily basis in its subtlety, but there are some constants.

I do feel like I have seen most of it, at least within my own cultural contexts of San Francisco, and other American and European cities. It is hard to get as curious or surprised. I don’t pour expectation into situations like I used to. Instead I am more aware of what does bring me satisfaction and excitement, and I think that I have learned that this includes working in effective collaborative groups, creative processes, exercise and the outdoors, good friends, close family and love. I also love learning, but that is a lot harder and I have always had, and will always have resistance and fear around it. I also love teaching, perhaps my most natural gift that I am lucky enough to exercise and get paid for. I have to work really hard to be a good artist and filmmaker, (and who says I’m any good at it) but teaching, while it’s hard work, is my gift. So things are more tempered now and I don’t trust that the next thing is going to wow me or change my life, and while this feels a little flat, I think it is more real. It makes me think about what I wrote about last night, that I could/should be taking the helm a little more in my own life, instead of relying on my world to keep feeding and propelling me into my future.

Then of course there is the physical, sexual and mortality crap. Let’s examine the physical first.

It is the ubiquitous complaint of aging – things start to hurt and you can’t do what you used to do. Oddly, being a very strong and relentlessly healthy person, despite all of the abuse, I am generally in better shape now than when I was in my 20s. I have more stamina and overall strength, but I have to say, these production days, as I have noted, have really been grueling. Once the adrenalin from the days of shooting have passed, I am wiped out. Now that’s surprising, but not the kind of surprising I was talking about above. I remember back in the 80s, walking up hills in SF and getting winded and feeling light headed. This was probably due to the combination of way too little sleep, fulltime school, half to ¾ time work, and partying every night combined with ample drinking, drug taking and tons of smoking. When I go for my physicals now the doctors always say, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it, (except for my anxiety, and then they say I have to change a few things-I’m working on it). All this strong body, climbing hills, good strokes from doctors make me feel good, but I know I am skating, I could be doing a lot more about keeping it together, eating better, more and consistent sleep, less wine, more down time, a bit more exercise. There, I said it in a semi public space; let’s see if that does anything.

And then there’s the other physical stuff, and it’s kind of inexorably linked to the sexuality thing, and that’s the fact that our bodies change and that there is outward evidence of it. I feel it, and you see it. Actually I see it too and it freaks me out. I know I look good for 50, but sometimes you catch that glimpse of yourself in a photo, or in a mirror at the gym and it is shocking. Or you hold a limb in a certain way and you note how the skin has changed, or you notice the (for me) few gray hairs that are beginning to colonize my temples and the occasional rough white lone hair in an eyebrow. And while the doctors have said I am not in menopause, or even that hideous term, para-menopause, it is coming. And as much as I want to be above and beyond these things, I am not. I am acutely aware that sexually is so linked, I believe biologically and culturally, to fertility. And remember, I am a dyed in the wool ageist, and boy is my bad attitude coming back to kick my ass.

Let me tell you a story.

About 11 or 12 years ago I went to see Patti Smith, someone I have never seen live, (I don’t really like live music that much, even when I was a wild thing, sniffing whatever, beer guzzling loud moth punk), but who I had admired and listened to for two decades. There I was in the club, she was performing her ass off and I caught myself thinking, “How dare she take the stage like that, she is performing her sexuality, her aggressive and defiant fertility, but she’s too old. She is a freak show” Thankfully I caught myself in the moment and scrutinized that nasty little voice and while I was still uncomfortable with her amazingly raw, and yes sexually charged performance, I told that voice to shut up. 11+ years ago, I was on the tale end of my 30s and heading into my own middle age, and being the queen of denial and ageist that I am, I did not fully embrace her reality for my future.

But here it is.

And then there’s mortality. When I go to museums I look at the age of living artist and compare myself to them. To not to have fully arrived by 50 is horrifying to me. I only have a limited number of years left to surge out ahead, to make and leave my mark. And of course since we live in an ageist culture, the older I become the less likely I am to break. And then there’s that real thing. Dying. Limited time here. Have to maximize what we have left. Leverage what we have done to date. Time is running out. If a bus hasn’t gotten us already, we need to pay attention to the clock. It is so uncomfortable and unbearably creepy. But it certainly adds urgency, and hopefully clarity, to what it is we do, and need to do, when we are 50 and beyond.

I could go on and on and on, and I’m sure I will hit hard and specifically on these human head fucks again in the next six months before I turn 51, so don’t fret, there’s more.

In the meantime, I hardly left the house at all today until around 4:30 to go the gym as I was learning iMovie and editing the de Young tour, not a very visual day, so I post some images of surface texture I shot yesterday.

And here is Claire’s post for the reading on Tuesday, (big tummy roll).

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Hi all!

Just a reminder that my 40th Birthday and Book Release party is coming up this Tuesday night!

Come celebrate my four decades on this earth, and the start of the next four! Also: Help officially launch my new chapbook, SLIGHTLY BEHIND AND TO THE LEFT. I’ll also be selling limited edition, hand-printed book jackets by Wasabi Press (see the image to the right and the video of Patty printing covers below!)

There will be readings and performances by me and folks such as: Lise Swenson, Jaime Cortez, Sadie Contini, Han Wang, Neela Banerjee, Shailja Patel, Patty Wakida, Pireeni Sundaralingam and Colm O’Riain, and many others. We’ll have a mic, so if you have five minutes’ or less worth of something creative, please let me know!

Plus, we’ll just be celebrating the start of a new, more morally prosperous and creatively appreciative decade. Yee Haw!