Photo by Tim Mossholder

I thought I knew myself pretty well, but then this old-age thing hit . . . hard. Both physically and psychologically.

I’m still in Appleton, Wisconsin as I write, awaiting my second cataract surgery, right eye, tomorrow. The first one went well. I’m not concerned about number two, at least not in and of itself. But I’ve felt myself plunging into a sense of deeper stress, feeling, with increasing regularity – as I stay here with my loving family – like a shrug of nobody.

Only minimally am I a participant in the basics of life. Yeah, things are essentially taken care of for me, which is great – it’s why I’m here – but nonetheless it leaves me feeling like a spectator of my own life. And it hurts to get up! Achy thighs, wobbly knees. Plus I don’t hear well, don’t see well (yet), and am good at pummeling myself into a state of uselessness: what I call I-don’t-matterness. As Leonard Cohen said shortly before he died, speaking of his body, “I feel like I’m being........

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