Things I Used to Be Able to Do

• Sleep through the night. Or if I awoke to fall soon back to sleep. AT present it is 4:15am and I have recently pushed myself out of bed rather than move about restlessly and frustratingly within it. I know I was dreaming somewhat enjoyably, but trying to interpret where the images came from did not bring me rest. Why exactly were those individuals tonight present in my dream in exactly that situation reminiscent of something?
• Run 40 miles a week even in the bitter morning cold of Mid-West Wisconsin. And not even bundled as was Charlie Brown after the first heavy snow and having slipped and fallen on the ice couldn’t get up and had to be pushed home by Snoopy. Said Charlie lying flat: “This is the most humiliating day of my life.”
• Tie my shoes by simply kneeling down to the floor. These days I look about for a chair or bench on which to sit and then carefully lean over so as not to tip forward on to my head or to top heavily fall forward. These days and at this hour I think of lines in Jackson Browne’s song:  “These days I'll sit on cornerstones/And count the time in quarter tones to ten my friend/Don't confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them.”
• Forget my failures. Of course, this draws me back to above #1. Perhaps these failures might explain the inability to sleep through the night.
• Be oblivious of mortality. Now, at my back I always hear . . . and I have become the elder resident of the last row at shul. My companions have since gone.
• Understand everything. Oh, I always had my doubts and not an insignificant number of them, but I think I possessed a confidence that I might soon find answers (note the tentativeness—I am propping myself up and consciously dissimulating!). Now, I am certain there are no answers but only questions, and I move forward with them. Robert Earl Keen says, “The Road goes on forever, and the party never ends.”
• Stay late at any party. Now, I am often the first to leave. I can’t sleep through the night (#1 above), but crawling into my bed at 10:00 PM surpasses any pleasure of crawling home at 3:00 AM to it.
• Read the newspapers. I learned to read the news from The New York Times. It is my paper of choice wherever I am located. I did not read cover to cover, but I read enough to be intelligently informed enough to have an opinion. Along the way I subscribed to In These Times, The Guardian, and The Nation. I could pronounce correctly Namibia, Now, the sight of Trump and his ignorant, self-absorbed despots despoils the front pages. I can’t bear to see his Mussolini-like visage or to read one single word of his bombast. I turn to the Science (only some of which I understand), the Food (most of which I will not eat), and the Arts section, and that will have to suffice.
• Watch television. I no longer own one. There is too much on them and most that is on is not worth watching. Sometimes, however, I find myself in a motel/hotel, and at night too much alone I turn on the TV set and click through the channels looking not only for what is on but for what else is on! Nothing but reruns of Law & Order and Seinfeld.
• Eat ice cream by the Ben & Jerry’s pint! Ah, I do miss this indulgence, but since I no longer do #2 above, and even though I am not without some aerobic exercise (spin cycle and yoga), alas, every scoop threatens my girth and belt size. Though of late I have seemingly lost a few pounds, most of that lost weight seems to have found its way back onto my neck and my shirt collars no longer fit! 

Enough! There are more, but I’m going to leave my stepping stones behind because something calls yet for me, and I’m going to light a match and start anew, and hope I don’t mistakenly burn down the house!