Photo: Victoria Grover
I just finished visiting my 93 year old mother at an ‘independent living’ home in West Palm Beach, and all I could think was, I’m not doing it! I remember sitting in high school and watching the track team marathon runners circling the school grounds until they collapsed, often throwing up along the way, concluding that wasn’t a sport for me.
Life Is More Like A Hockey Game
Instead I joined the hockey team. In, “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll (Memoirs Of A Music Junkie)” I wrote,
“Ice hockey is a fast moving game with all the players on the ice constantly in motion along with the puck. Even substitutions are made ‘on the fly.’ When you first start to play, it seems like you are making split second pressure decisions every time the puck comes near you. Gradually though, as you learn to feel the game and understand where the other players are moving, based upon your position and place in time, everything begins to slow down. You make decisions before you receive the puck so that by the time that little hard piece of rubber hits your stick you know what your options are. You don’t necessarily have to do something right away. Sometimes the longer you maneuver, the more options open. On the other hand, when an opportunity presents itself, you’d better take your shot. It’s amazing how much life is a hockey game.”
And it’s fun!
Life Shouldn’t be a Marathon
It’s hard for me now to walk through mom’s white haired library of lives once lived, now deteriorating with age, trying to reach a finish line they can’t see, congratulating each other for still being in the race. There’s was the Dylan Thomas generation, silently “raging against the dying light.” Fuck it… The Eskimos had it right. When I’m ready, I just want to turn off the damn light switch.
Where I Agree With Conservatives
Now here’s the one place I might actually agree with the ‘right wing.’ Government shouldn’t force me to keep running when I want out of the race. Since the Nixon administration, I’ve had a problem with the Federal Government meddling in my personal life, writing,
“As the humiliation of the Vietnam sixties set in, having ripped the country’s psyche apart, in the seventies we anti-bodies to stupidity just couldn’t fight anymore as the body politic was overrun by reactionary corruption. Nixon’s ‘law and order’ pretenders fouled the political machinery causing a breakdown in its ability to function and belief that it ever would.”
And I don’t think it ever did.
Religiosity
Besides politics, the other thing I’m supposed to avoid discussing is religion. BTAIM (‘Be That As It May’- baby boomer translation)…In an early chapter I noted,
“I can’t convince myself that there is an all-powerful human type being sitting up there in the sky watching. In fact I have trouble with most ‘organized’ concepts of God and religion. We humans are conceited creatures to think we’re the last rung on the evolutionary ladder.”
Supposedly, religious doctrine dictates that God wants me to stay around and fall apart, painfully losing control of everything, until he (or she) decides the race is over. Fuck that too! It’s my life and I plan to live it, or leave it, on my own terms.
My book Sex, No Drugs and Rock n’ Roll (Memoirs of a Music Junkie) is available now! Take a look at some excerpts here or my About section for more about yours truly.
Follow me on Twitter at @LEKalikow or Facebook at LEKalikowAuthor!