Hey folks - Any comments bashing Oldster or the authors mentioned in the piece are gonna be removed. Each of them read and approved the essay, and got the humor of it, so hat tip to them all, and to Sari, who posted this on Oldster, so obviously understood the humor as well. They should be commended - perhaps the global plague of seriousness is coming to an end. Thanks all.
I'd thank you for having the balls to run it, but then I'd be cancelled. So thank you for having the labia to run it, and following the nipples of your convictions.
Am I too old to be your companion? At 80, I find "Oldster's" essays intimidating. I thought It was just me. Not sure I'd know a dazzle if it bit me. On the other hand, I find your writing real and filled with integrity - that I can relate to. I don't know how you do it but please keep it up; I love the Fetal Position.
Man, Mary! I could not have expressed this better. Be assured it is not just you, sweet girl. My life, like yours, is nearly done, and I accept that I will NEVER get it right, never come to any sort of enlightenment. But I still know how to laugh at the human melodrama. Thanks to Shalom Auslander and others of his tribe. If there are any others of his tribe...
Thanks Sharron, It's good to know I am not alone on this crazy journey. I read recently that we should all just accept that, as human beings, we are all idiots trying to find our way. Since I have accepted being an "idiot" I feel a lot better. I think laughter can be our salvation.
Real wisdom, there, Mary. That's the whole point of FP.
One of my favorite quotes, from Kierkegaard:
"Something wonderful happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. “Will you,” said Mercury, “have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing.” For a moment, I was at a loss. The I addressed myself to the gods as follows: “Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side.”
My 6 year old looked at our bookshelves the other day and said "why do we have so many books if nobody ever reads them?" "I do! I do read them," I said "after you've gone to sleep at night."
You know what's worse than being a lazy reader? Lying about it to save face in front of a 6 year old.
My Oldster essay: Everybody has porn in their internet history. No one lives today as though it's their last day. Everyone has bad thoughts about Liz Gilbert. Everybody wants to hang out with Shalom Auslander. Most of us were born in a dumpster. Life is terrible and beautiful. Nothing is truly shameful. Fifty-three is the sweet spot of life, and still it sucks. Most things suck, but some things do not. There is no God. You're okay, I'm okay. Your wife loves you. Go outside.
Shalom, Shalom. Each of us in his or her own way is a shmuck, so don't worry about it. Nobody but you is keeping score of your own deficiencies. Plus, once you're gone, no one will care about your porn views or your sex toys. Those who love you will mourn you, and those who do not love you will not give you a second thought, so... be easier on yourself. Forgive yourself your trespasses and just enjoy your life, as it is limited and will, in due time, be gone. Take a deep breath, have a good meal, call a friend just to schmooze, and allow yourself the pleasure of your own company. This advice from a 78 year old who has learned to just enjoy his life.
"...once you're gone, no one will care about your porn views or your sex toys." Amen. And besides, you will be dead and beyond caring. All the same, you could clear your cache everyday. Just saying.
Cancer is usually staged 1-4, meaning (in order): fuck, it's cancer; it's growing; it's in your lymph nodes; it's gone walkabout, probably to somewhere really bad.
But we can easily extrapolate this to stage 10:
5- your body is entirely cancer. Mobile cancer.
6- your shambling cancer body is infecting other people
7- your whole town is cancer (also known as the LA stage)
8- your whole country is cancer (insert scapegoat nation of choice here)
9- the whole world is cancer, (indistinguishable from immediately pre-nirvana Buddhism)
10- the cancer is setting off to colonise the universe, Star Trek baddie-style. Although who's doing the staging at this point is a good question.
I like extending it past the body. I was thinking Stage 10 is you're just a massive tumor, head-to-toe, propped up in a bed in a hospital hoping the nurse will turn switch the TV from news to Spongebob.
My 79 year old friend’s last words were a whisper to go into his closet and destroy his magazines so his family surrounding him on his deathbed wouldn’t find out he was gay. I’m with you, Mister, I think all that garbage about being at peace is a bunch of hogwash, or from tranquilizers, or at best, experienced fleetingly at the exact moment of writing, which then passes as we must. How about “I love that all my organs have fallen out as I run happily through the Amazon”?
I'll be the first to admit that NONE of your wonders about what happens after you're dead surprise me. I'm 51 and in the last three years I've lost my son and two best friends...two of those three were younger than me and the other was my age. Trust me, you're not the only one who has weird questions.
After my son died and I started breathing again, I began writing involuntarily humorously about what it was like tying up his affairs and loose ends. No matter how brutal a situation can be, somehow there is ALWAYS something to laugh at.
PS: I'm nowhere near having my shit together. And I always think I'm dying of something. Some nights, if my headache is bad enough, I leave farewell notes on my kitchen counter in case I die in my sleep.
I stopped following our reading the brilliant Oldster after a big almost dead health scare and the approach of my 60th birthday -- it seems while I was living my life, making mistakes, getting into the fecundity of all of this, others were cultivating a paradise of achievement, an Instagram heaven, and uncharitably they are kind of boring, I really felt some of my heros and inspirations becoming lesser, hollow artificial shells, pulp comic biblical stories for young kids who don't have the opportunity for an intelligent education. I know it's unfair I far prefer the rants of Fetal Position or the teisho's of my Zen teachers which talk about the struggles of life and death, their shortcomings not some aged equanimity which none of us had at other points so why do we expect it now?
So far the big wisdom age has revealed is to be ok with all of it, the doubt, the failure, the browser history (which you can set to self erase BTW) the whole messy beautiful living thing --; living in the studio rather than the museum gallery😸
I’m 67 (as of yesterday) and I’m no closer to wisdom than I was the day I was born. Is that of any comfort? I’m quite sure it isn’t. Anyway, I love your work. I’ve given Hope, a Tragedy to every actor and actress I know in the hope that one of them will want to make a movie of it. Thank you for your writing, and being you.
Hey folks - Any comments bashing Oldster or the authors mentioned in the piece are gonna be removed. Each of them read and approved the essay, and got the humor of it, so hat tip to them all, and to Sari, who posted this on Oldster, so obviously understood the humor as well. They should be commended - perhaps the global plague of seriousness is coming to an end. Thanks all.
Thank you, Shalom. And for this hysterical piece.
I'd thank you for having the balls to run it, but then I'd be cancelled. So thank you for having the labia to run it, and following the nipples of your convictions.
😂
<3
Am I too old to be your companion? At 80, I find "Oldster's" essays intimidating. I thought It was just me. Not sure I'd know a dazzle if it bit me. On the other hand, I find your writing real and filled with integrity - that I can relate to. I don't know how you do it but please keep it up; I love the Fetal Position.
Man, Mary! I could not have expressed this better. Be assured it is not just you, sweet girl. My life, like yours, is nearly done, and I accept that I will NEVER get it right, never come to any sort of enlightenment. But I still know how to laugh at the human melodrama. Thanks to Shalom Auslander and others of his tribe. If there are any others of his tribe...
Thanks Sharron, It's good to know I am not alone on this crazy journey. I read recently that we should all just accept that, as human beings, we are all idiots trying to find our way. Since I have accepted being an "idiot" I feel a lot better. I think laughter can be our salvation.
Real wisdom, there, Mary. That's the whole point of FP.
One of my favorite quotes, from Kierkegaard:
"Something wonderful happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. “Will you,” said Mercury, “have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing.” For a moment, I was at a loss. The I addressed myself to the gods as follows: “Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side.”
Amen, Soren.
Perfect plan, Mary. I am with you.
I'm going to take the other side of this regarding you.
You must know that your writing makes people happy and makes people laugh, which you also must know is no common or easy feat.
So I'm not buying complete misery from someone who writes like you write. There is joy in the art of your writing. You can't hide it!
So I'm sorry, you don't win the misery or the unwise contest. Not even close.
Laughing at the dark - and helping others to - is indeed therapeutic. It relieves the pain. Alas, it's not curative.
Silver lining: more to laugh at the next day.
My 6 year old looked at our bookshelves the other day and said "why do we have so many books if nobody ever reads them?" "I do! I do read them," I said "after you've gone to sleep at night."
You know what's worse than being a lazy reader? Lying about it to save face in front of a 6 year old.
"The polyps in my rectum gave me no such joy." The funniest sentence I've read in ages...
Nor did the lumps in my breast.
My Oldster essay: Everybody has porn in their internet history. No one lives today as though it's their last day. Everyone has bad thoughts about Liz Gilbert. Everybody wants to hang out with Shalom Auslander. Most of us were born in a dumpster. Life is terrible and beautiful. Nothing is truly shameful. Fifty-three is the sweet spot of life, and still it sucks. Most things suck, but some things do not. There is no God. You're okay, I'm okay. Your wife loves you. Go outside.
Shalom, Shalom. Each of us in his or her own way is a shmuck, so don't worry about it. Nobody but you is keeping score of your own deficiencies. Plus, once you're gone, no one will care about your porn views or your sex toys. Those who love you will mourn you, and those who do not love you will not give you a second thought, so... be easier on yourself. Forgive yourself your trespasses and just enjoy your life, as it is limited and will, in due time, be gone. Take a deep breath, have a good meal, call a friend just to schmooze, and allow yourself the pleasure of your own company. This advice from a 78 year old who has learned to just enjoy his life.
"...once you're gone, no one will care about your porn views or your sex toys." Amen. And besides, you will be dead and beyond caring. All the same, you could clear your cache everyday. Just saying.
Sackcloth and ash and hurling invectives skyward is the appropriate response to tragedy but it makes for terrible social media content.
I love this. My dazzles are few and far between too.
What's a dazzle?
I think it's something that runs on batteries. And requires lube. Otherwise I have no idea.
i just ordered one on amazon
I got the 4-pak. "More for your Dazzle dollar."
Yeh. Me too, Gail. I've never owned a dazzler, but for everything, a season.
Cancer is usually staged 1-4, meaning (in order): fuck, it's cancer; it's growing; it's in your lymph nodes; it's gone walkabout, probably to somewhere really bad.
But we can easily extrapolate this to stage 10:
5- your body is entirely cancer. Mobile cancer.
6- your shambling cancer body is infecting other people
7- your whole town is cancer (also known as the LA stage)
8- your whole country is cancer (insert scapegoat nation of choice here)
9- the whole world is cancer, (indistinguishable from immediately pre-nirvana Buddhism)
10- the cancer is setting off to colonise the universe, Star Trek baddie-style. Although who's doing the staging at this point is a good question.
I like extending it past the body. I was thinking Stage 10 is you're just a massive tumor, head-to-toe, propped up in a bed in a hospital hoping the nurse will turn switch the TV from news to Spongebob.
Could ausi (sp?) draw that please? A cute tumor wearing glasses and on his tray nothing is eaten but the chocolate pudding.
God damn, there's always a typo. Edited - oh wow, I can edit comments on the laptop, just not the phone. Dammit, I should paywall these gems.
Anyway, there's not a typo now.
My 79 year old friend’s last words were a whisper to go into his closet and destroy his magazines so his family surrounding him on his deathbed wouldn’t find out he was gay. I’m with you, Mister, I think all that garbage about being at peace is a bunch of hogwash, or from tranquilizers, or at best, experienced fleetingly at the exact moment of writing, which then passes as we must. How about “I love that all my organs have fallen out as I run happily through the Amazon”?
Wow you have no idea how many years you’ve still got to keep apologizing for stuff.
I'll be the first to admit that NONE of your wonders about what happens after you're dead surprise me. I'm 51 and in the last three years I've lost my son and two best friends...two of those three were younger than me and the other was my age. Trust me, you're not the only one who has weird questions.
After my son died and I started breathing again, I began writing involuntarily humorously about what it was like tying up his affairs and loose ends. No matter how brutal a situation can be, somehow there is ALWAYS something to laugh at.
PS: I'm nowhere near having my shit together. And I always think I'm dying of something. Some nights, if my headache is bad enough, I leave farewell notes on my kitchen counter in case I die in my sleep.
"No matter how brutal a situation can be, somehow there is ALWAYS something to laugh at." Truth. Thanks, Kristi.
Hugs
I stopped following our reading the brilliant Oldster after a big almost dead health scare and the approach of my 60th birthday -- it seems while I was living my life, making mistakes, getting into the fecundity of all of this, others were cultivating a paradise of achievement, an Instagram heaven, and uncharitably they are kind of boring, I really felt some of my heros and inspirations becoming lesser, hollow artificial shells, pulp comic biblical stories for young kids who don't have the opportunity for an intelligent education. I know it's unfair I far prefer the rants of Fetal Position or the teisho's of my Zen teachers which talk about the struggles of life and death, their shortcomings not some aged equanimity which none of us had at other points so why do we expect it now?
So far the big wisdom age has revealed is to be ok with all of it, the doubt, the failure, the browser history (which you can set to self erase BTW) the whole messy beautiful living thing --; living in the studio rather than the museum gallery😸
I’m 67 (as of yesterday) and I’m no closer to wisdom than I was the day I was born. Is that of any comfort? I’m quite sure it isn’t. Anyway, I love your work. I’ve given Hope, a Tragedy to every actor and actress I know in the hope that one of them will want to make a movie of it. Thank you for your writing, and being you.
Making me LOL once again. From the sidekick savant, the provocative best friend, the Dead End Gene Pool; the shallow end at best.