Your days are numbered, so are mine – Dylan “Mississippi”
I used to jog; now I walk but retain hope of getting back to jogging. Mostly I try to stay in motion. I’ve never been that guy forever trying to “beat his best time.” I see these older runner dudes, tanned and skeletal, compulsively checking their digital watches and monitoring their pace. I admire the effort and occasionally long to be of their tribe, but they rarely look contented or in the moment. There’s something of a hollowed-out, resistant quality to them. I’ve read about the the direct link between longevity and being notably thin. Those with appearance conveying “verge of death” apparently often outlive their more cherubic counterparts. But at what price? Longevity, like all good things, isn’t an absolute. Neither letting oneself go nor fighting the inevitable seems preferable. My consistent, lower intensity exercise habits have been tied to relief from an overactive mind. I’m trying to escape myself, not death. I suppose I’m not trying to hurry the latter along, either.
So many things that we will never undo / I know you’re sorry; I’m sorry too
We’re all hard-wired. I’ve been fighting this simple fact my whole life. The operating system at birth remains fixed for the duration. We can dare new experiences but only with our wiring and response intact. The skeletal older dude pushing his pace while checking his G-Shock would be doing some version of same at rest. We can alter substance and behavior (food, sex, alcohol, exercise etc) and experience temporary escape. But short of permanent brain alteration or ongoing LSD dosing, returning to the baseline self is inevitable. The difference is the relative benefit or price paid. You’re still you regardless; even if you’re you with a brain injury or on LSD.
Whether this lands as irrelevant or grand epiphany likely defaults back to the wiring thing. In my case these observations are central. My operating system has made certain things, both trivial and impressive, relatively easy. But it’s made other moves more difficult. I made a move in my later 30’s from San Francisco to New York City, eventually settling for a long spell in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. I met new people and forever cemented New York as part of me. But I was still me there. To those judging this observation facile or redundant, I’d suggest it’s because you are you. If there’s useful application in all of it, perhaps it’s in extending the framing to others I have also known and judged. They too could only be themselves.
Bob Dylan played Forest Hills in Queens the other week. I saw him some years ago at the Beacon Theater and take comfort in the idea of him out there on the road, cloaked in a twelve-dollar hoodie and hunched over his piano. Two other New York friends were there, unbeknownst to each other but both in touch with me. In this I also take comfort and feel in motion whether hunkered down in New York or California.
Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now
It’s a hopeful sentiment, that with motion comes revelation and interest. Whether it’s true or not is debatable. At the end of the day it might just be more of Dylan’s conman instincts — which just makes the song all the better. (Apologies to Joni Mitchell.) At the very least I may be slightly closer to accepting that it will be me, getting there or not. And that’s not nothing.
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