“STILL HERE!”: Reflections on the Aging Process

 

As I walk along these days, I’m usually singing “The Autumn Leaves,” nursing welcome nostalgia.

Truly a glorious time of year! So grateful!

Sometime last week, on my long morning walk, a man walked towards me whom I recognized, though I didn’t remember his name, nor did I ask. As we met up, here’s the first thing he said to me: “I’m worried about your brain.”

Oh my! Shades of October 11 post:

https://annkreilkamp.net/at-lothlorien-another-dimension-or-dementia/

Sometimes I think I AM becoming “demented;” other times I realize that I meet and greet so many many people on my walks, and do so with the goal of truly greeting each one with my heart and soul, that likely many of them remember our brief encounters, though I, just as likely, do not.

This, in fact, has become my daily spiritual practice while out and about: to greet the other, truly greet the other, no matter how short the encounter. My way is so very unusual, in this day of earbuds and screens while marching and staring straight ahead, or stumbling along, lost in thought — rather than gratefully appreciating the entire sensuous surround, including other human beings!

Sometimes I’m tempted to yell, a very loud “BOO” as we pass each other. Startle this hiding soul out of the mind/body’s robotic behavior. In fact, I had to stop myself from doing it again this morning. . .  And actually, it would be appropriate, during Halloween season, to yell “BOO!”

Hmmm. . . Stay tuned. I’m likely to do it soon.

So any way, this fellow — who is both friendly and forthright, something I deeply appreciate — stopped to tell me, and I know he’s told me before, in fact he reminded me of just when and where, a few months ago, that he follows my blog on a daily basis. Which surprised me (again) no end. How many local “followers” do I have? I keep on presuming none. Which doesn’t stop me from posting. My function is homeopathic.

So anyway, he then said to me (again): “More and more you are focused on the past; why not focus on the future?” Something like that. I looked at him. Wondered how old he is. Probably around 65, or a bit older.

Back when I was 65, I sure didn’t ruminate over the past the way I am now. I was busy moving into my third cycle of Saturn, running the magazine Crone Chronicles (which lasted for 12 years, a Jupiter cycle!).

In fact, I’d say that I was never so caught up in remembrance, in what I sometimes call “recapitulation,” until these past few years; and now with growing emphasis, especially the past year, when transit Uranus began the august process of completing its 84 year cycle for the first (and only) time. So yes, I have been focused on the past. My goal here is to help myself resonate, reverberate, with my the various concentric, interacting cycles of my long-lived experience in its entirety! — so far. And since I’m a writer, I write it all down. Put some of it here.

I do this as a woman who is consciously aging. Growing old, rather than just getting old. Truly embracing all that an unusually long life has had to offer.

Oh, and BTW: this fellow whom I met (again), told me (probably again) that he thinks astrology is “bunk.” (Not sure that’s the word he used. Maybe it was “bullshit.” In any case, very dismissive.)

Which makes me really surprised that he reads my blogposts daily, since astrology, a symbolic language which, when deeply embraced, assumes the cyclical, spiraling nature of time/space as embraced within the right-brain multidimensional (5D and beyond) mysterious web which I always aim to integrate (corpus callosum!) with the linear, “logical,” left-brain 3D billiard ball “cause/effect” programming we all receive via schools, tradition, the dominant culture, etc.

(Whew! long sentence!)

Plus, of course, the constant, determined desire to “break” whatever programming I notice that does not serve either myself or the world around me. And of course, \ cultural programming goes on and on. One is never done paying attention to how one is being hoodwinked!

In any case, when friends and acquaintances meet me on the street and ask, “How are you?” I always answer “Still here!”

This response tends to freak them out . . .

Yes. Still here, and possibly closing down this embodied life with the end of the Uranus cycle, or not! Perhaps spiraling into the ever more spacious present, absorbing and reflecting more and more experience for another few years, until my third Saturn return, at around 90 years. When this recap business that disciplined Saturn has demanded may be done? Hmmm. Would I be released from this embodiment then? Or am I meant to go on and on and on, in this body which, I admit I treat so well (exercise patterns, nutrition, sleep, etc.) that I enjoy the energy — and balance — of someone much much younger.