Bittersweet Valentine

Good morning Tuesday;

Yesterday I mused about my observation, at the McCartney show, how nostalgia, while in the actual moment to be lived, tends to impair life’s forward movement. I thought about how people were busy capturing a moment about a moment being related to the present by someone who had lived it in the past. I noticed how some persons danced and sang while a great many more persons held their mobile phones high capturing some poor quality video. And I wondered, who captured this moment better? This quickly brought Escher’s paintings to my mind: the one (below) or the two hands drawing each other.

And I wasn’t really inside the stadium at that moment. I was neither dancing nor recording. I was observing, and my mind was quiet despite the commotion around me. I was the fish in that fishbowl realizing he was in water, trying to imagine what was outside. I was looking for answers within to see myself from without. I was inside myself rather than outside with the crowd in the stadium.

Paperback Writer was the next song. This is the coda of my retirement, which a younger man would call career transition. I do not want to think about career transitions let alone admit to having one at 46 years of age. I should be driving around in a new red sports car, picking up 20-year-olds and abusing my established power at the office: enjoying a scripted mid-life crisis not walking into a wilderness. What I did for 22 years was a passion before I retired at 43. But my passion before that was writing creative stories, and I have to redevelop it, which is why I decided to keep this blog.

I used to watch people from my kitchen window on the third floor of my building as a kid. Then I would write about other people inside my stories. This was all about the time I kept a diary. I read some of that diary many years ago. I was impressed with what I had managed to convey despite a lack of polish and spelling so bad I had to sound it out. I was reading about a young boy’s adventures that were every measure as good as any story published. But I always liked to watch people and wonder what they were thinking; where they were going; whom did they know.

It is a snap to know then what I am thinking as I read some of your profiles.

But the next song, I recall it as a solo on piano, stopped my reflections. Its simple, lush soul filled with emotional depth brought tears to my eyes. I recall saying aloud: this is the best song at the concert in spite of the fact the concert was just 6 songs into the evening. And I was right. The song is new McCartney: My Valentine.


It reminded me of what I have sought from a valentine of my own ever since I, as a young man, sat at my kitchen table making the effort to articulate my own giving and receiving relationship needs list. And, as I listened to what this boy-faced old-man sang – about his confidante, his consoler, his optimistic reassurance of relief – I was moved to tears realizing I had not yet found my own incentive in the face of all the disincentives and counterfactual arguments so thoroughly distilled into a culture like a potent, 95% vodka. The tears mourned my passing of hope, and certainly the death of a marriage lasting 60, 50 or even 40 years with such a person – whether or not that marriage contributes to household tax deductions or merely a household of peace.

My next thoughts briefly concerned having children who, as I steadily age, become more likely to be my grandchildren or someone else’s children than my own. I had just finished high school when my mother turned 65. So while it is possible to be pregnant at 46, I am certain the idea of being middle-aged parents is not well thought out. It is something I push back into my mind so as not to be overwhelmed.