Ye olde gravel knee has been acting up lately after 23 years, and the pain is an approximately exact match for what rehabilitation felt like back then; using bike pedals to slowly tear my knee into movement. The first time my leg went all the way around I yelped loud enough that the whole room shut up.
I don’t want to call it a difference, but what has changed in the intervening is both a stronger appreciation for what my body can do and what it is willing to let my brain convince it to do; and I don’t want to call it an acceptance, but perhaps an ease regarding my inevitable defeat to entropy.
Those who know me well are annoyed at how often I tell them “l’entropie est le seulement dieu”.
But almost all of the good hot dog spots are closed; it matters not whether thou stanned for the chili from Hot Dog Inn or Steve’s, you can’t get either now. People use Chat GPT to read tarot. The old flea market lot is now an Amazon Warehouse. It’s fine if you’re grouchy about this. I am. But I get over most things more quickly now. “An entropy of my ability to care” if you’re young. But maybe aging is simply a prudence of investment in things, an ease with change, an indifference to vicissitude. Unless you die young, you’re here to play the long game whether or not you learn the rules.
People hold their cameras up to record their favorite songs. People used to hold their lighters up. People used to hold their babies up during a royal progress, or to see the last bit of sunset on the last day of summer, or just to hold them up as a way of saying “you haven’t caught me yet, God.”