Collage

     I had not looked forward to the 75s item, suggested by Mariposa and Ni Aódagain, that I make a collage of 75 pieces. It was a good idea, but I don't particularly like making collages. My son suggested I concentrate on words, since words are closer to my heart than images, so I started tearing relevant words from magazines but without much enthusiasm. I just wasn't yet inspired.

      The first inspiration came at Christmas, when my son gave me a round piece of masonite, already gessoed, that I knew immediately would be the surface for the collage. The second impetus was when my eye fell on my decades-long post card collection. I loved those post cards. I have often gone through them just for the pleasure of it. I have used them as writing prompts in creative writing classes, and my old house, I made three large screens of sewn-together post cards. Some of them still have ragged stitches. Why couldn't I now cut them up for images in a collage?

      Suddenly I loved the idea of making a collage of 75 pieces.

   Dividing the collection into categories – animals, people, mountains, lakes, ocean, architecture, places, and so on – gave me a chance to look closely at each beloved post card again. Here were many cards Maren, my dear friend who died three or four years ago, had sent me from her travels. Here were mountain pictures from my backpacking partner Phil. Here were post cards from friends who have died, from friends who have passed out of my life, from my son, my sister, former boy friends, friends from the past, acquaintances writing to say, "We had a good time with you," and beloved friends who live far from me. Here were pictures of places I had been and places I would probably never see. Here were tributes to me and thank-you cards and love notes. For hours ghosts from the past fluttered around me, kissing me on the cheek, patting my head as I worked.

      After categorizing the post cards, I picked from each category the cards I knew I would want in the collage – those whose images I have always loved, those depicting places special to me in my life, those with pictures that seemed representative of me. Those cards totaled about 65, which was just about right. The other ten or so would come as I worked.

      I found that I had to cut the post cards into very small pieces to get 75 in one collage. For the center I used a painting of a woman reclining with a book, cut round. I arranged the pictures by categories around her; then I rearranged them by color. Then, carefully, I glued them on. The whole project took three days.

     This may not be a stunning art piece, but I love it. It is a collage of 75 years of my life. There is a backpacker on the board and a skier and swimmers in the ocean. There are art and food and music. There are flowers, birds, trees, animals of all kinds. There are place I have lived – Vanderbilt University, Cambridge, Sweden; places I have visited – Greece, France, Denmark; and places I love – Crater Lake National Park, Ashland, the Oregon coast. There are lakes and rivers and mountains. There are pictures with memories of friends deeply embedded. 

      There are also, of course, words: "Friends," "Théatre de l'Opéra," "Zornsamlingarna" ("Collections of the Swedish painter Anders Zorn," whose house I visited with Maren), and, across the picture of the reclining woman in the center of the collage, a quote by Rumi that was on one of my post cards: "Let the beauty we love be what we do." Indeed. That's what the whole collage is about.

With thanks to Mariposa and Ni Aódagain for setting me on this journey.

Poets' Wisdom about Ourselves as We Grow Older

      Last week I finished collecting into a book 75 poems about aging. I don't remember who gave me this idea, and unfortunately, I didn't write down his or her name, but it was a good item for the 75x75 project because I got to read lots of poetry. 

       Some poems to put in the book were no-brainers: T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (one of my favorite poems); Yeats's poems about old age (the beginning of one is quoted on my stairs: "When have I last looked on/The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies/Of the dark leopards of the moon?"); Robert Frost's "Death of the Hired Man," which I memorized years ago; Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

      Then I started searching. I found various lists on various websites and chose from them. Reading one poet led me to memories of another. In the end I collected about 85 poems, from poets I have known for decades, from contemporary poets I have read before, from names I had never heard of. Choosing the 75 I liked best was no easy task, though I do have my favorites.

      What I learned from this exercise is that many poets who live into old age write about old age, – Yeats, Kunitz, Atwood, Donne. Others write about what they think old age will look like or what it looks like in another person: Coleridge ("Youth and Age"), Jeffers ("Fawn's Foster-Mother"), Tennyson ("Ulysses"). Some welcome old age with gentleness (Mary Oliver; Ursula LeGuin); others rage against it (Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night") or view it with irony (A. R. Ammons, "In View of the Fact"). The variety makes for a good read. 

      The book about people who have accomplished great things after the age of 75 was spiral bound. For variety, I made this one a collection in a three-ring binder. Instead of typing the poems all in the same font, I copied them from books, some from one anthology, some for another, some from a poet's book of poems, some cut out and glued on. The different pages add to the interest.

      Below I've  copied one of my favorites (omitting "Prufrock" because it's too long). I've chosen "A History of High Heels" by Tony Hoagland, who died a week or so ago, so this is kind of a tribute to him. Below that is a list of all the poems, in the hopes that you will look them up and savor these words of wisdom about ourselves as we grow older. (An asterisk just means it's a poem I particularly like.)

      A History of High Heels

by Tony Hoagland

It's like God leaned down long ago and said,

to a woman who was just standing around,

"How would you like a pair of shoes

that shoves the backs of your feet up about four inches

so you balance always on your tiptoes

and your spine roller-coasters forward, then back,

so that even when you are spin-doctoring a corporate merger

or returning from your father's funeral in Florida,

your rump sticks out in a fertility announcement

and your chest is pushed out a little bit in front of you

the way that majorettes precede a marching band?"

No, I shouldn't have said that – I'm sorry.

It's just my curdled bitterness talking; it's just

            my disappointment flaring up

in a toxic blaze of misdirected scorn –

because today is one of those days when I am starting to suspect

that sex was just a wild-goose chase

in which I honk-honk-honked away

      three-quarters of my sweet, unconscious life.

Now my hair is gray, and I'm in the Philadelphia airport,

where women are still walking past me endlessly

with that clickety-clack, clickety-clack,

flipping their hair and licking their teeth,

while underneath my own shoes

I suddenly can feel the emptiness of space;

and over my head, I see light falling from the sky

that all these years

I might have been leaning back

to gaze at and long for and praise.

75 Poems about Aging

1. Anonymous, Beowulf (lines 1722b-1768)

2. Adcock, Fleur, "Mrs. Baldwin"

3. Ammons, A. R., "In View of the Fact"

4. Angelous, Maya, "On Aging"

5. Arnold, Matthew, "Growing Old"

6. Atwood, Margaret, "Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age"

7. Cabral, Olga, "Lillian's Chair"

8. Carroll, Lewis, "You Are Old, Father William"

9. Southey, Robert, "The Old Man's Comforts, and How He Gained Them" (a take-off on Carroll's poem)

10. Cavafy, Constantine, "The God Forsakes Anthony"

*11. Chase, Linda, "Old Flame"

12. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, "Youth and Age"

13-14. Collins, Billy, two poems ("Forgetfulness" and "The Golden Years")

15. Creeley, Robert, "Age"

16-19. Four sonnets by John Donne ("Death Be Not Proud," "As Due by Many Titles," "Thou Hast Made Me," "This Is My Play's Last Scene")

*20-21. T. S. Eliot, two poems ("Prufrock" and "Gerontion")

22. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Terminus"

23. Fainlight, Ruth, "Aging"

24. Feinstein, Elaine, "Long Life"

25-39. Robert Frost, five poems ("Stopping by Woods," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "An Old Man's Winter Night," "Provide, Provide," "Death of the Hired Man")

30. Hall, Donald, "Affirmation"

*31. Hoagland, Tony, "A History of High Heels"

*32. Hopkins, Gerard Manley, "Spring and Fall"

33. Hughes, Ted, "Old Age Gets Up"

34-35. Jeffers, Robinson, two poems ("Vulture" and "Fawn's Foster-Mother")

36. Joseph, Jenny, "Warning"

37. Justice, Donald, "Men at Forty"

*38. Kunitz, Stanley, "Touch Me"

39. Larkin, Philip, "Aubade"

40-41. LeGuin, Ursula, two poems ("My birthday Present," "The Arts of Old Age")

42. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, "Nature"

43. Lu Yu, "Written in a Carefree Mood"

44. Silverstein, Shel, "The Little Boy and the Old Man"

*45. Marvell, Andrew, "To His Coy Mistress"

46. McClatchy, J. D. "Wolf's Trees"

*47-48. McGough, Robert, two contradictory poems ("Let Mew Die a Youngman's Death" and "Not for Men a Youngman's Death")

49. Milosz, Czslaw, "Late Ripeness"

50-52. Oliver, Mary, three poems ("When Death Comes," "The Gift," "I Worried")

53. Parini, Jay, "His Morning Meditations" 

54. Randolph, Thomas, "Upon His Portrait"

55. Kaufman, Wallace, "Untitled" (his take on Randolph's poem)

56. Chief Seattle (words)

57-60. Shakespeare, William, four sonnets (#2, 60, 66, and 73)

61. Duffy, Maureen, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold"

62. Sitwell, Dame Edith, "The Poet Laments the Coming of Old Age"

63. Swir, Anne, "She Is Sixty"

64. Tagore, Rabindranath,  "Closed Path"

65-66. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, two poems ("Ulysses," "Crossing the Bar")

*67. Thomas, Dylan, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

68. Woo, David, "Eden"

*69. Wright, David, "Lines of Retirement after Reading Lear"

*70-75. W. B. Yeats, six poems ("Sailing to Byzantium," "The Circus Animals' Desertion," "The Wild Old Wicked Man," "When You Are Old," "The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner," and "Lines Written in Dejection")

Four-month Assessment

      On the 20th of each month, I assess how well I'm doing with the 75 x 75 project. I don't want to look at the list of 75 things a month before my birthday and see that I still have half of them to do! I want to keep up with progress.

      On November 20 I had finished 28 of the 75 items. Some of those were easy (eat 75 blueberries; donate $75 to the Applegater), but some were more complex: write down a memory for each year of my life (difficult not because each year didn't have a memory but because I couldn't remember what happened in which year and because I had a hard time omitting memories), hike to a 7500-foot altitude (fun!), knit something based on 75 stitches.

 I had, in total, accomplished 54% of all items, somewhat ahead of the percentage per month necessary for even distribution of tasks2. It looks like I'm in pretty good shape until you look at what's left. I can't identify 75 botanical items on one hike until wild flower season or hike 75 miles until the snow melts. I have a lot more new dishes to cook, a lot more new words to add to my vocabulary (reading Moby Dick has helped), and a lot more hikes or skis to do, to say nothing of taking sixty-two more swims, somehow, before July 20. The last swim was on the 18th of November, in the Smith River of Northern California.

      I'm coming along well with writing 75 poems of 75 words each. (See today's post at dianacoogle.blogspot.com for two of those poems.) I haven't strung 75 beads or made a crown with 75 dried flowers or created a collage of 75 pieces. I have collected 75 rocks (91, actually), but I haven't created the Goldsworthy-style art piece with them yet. I haven't learned to count to 75 in a new language, but I have learned how to say, "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in 56 languages. Nineteen to go! My granddaughter, who gave me that challenge, opened her atlas while I was with her at Thanksgiving and gave me thirteen more languages: Marshallese, Kyrgyz, Dioula (from the Ivory Coast and Mali), Kurdish, Xhosa, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa (from Mozambique), Palauan, Kinyarwanda, Melanesian (from the Solomon Islands), Somalian, and Isi Zulu (from South Africa). I'll learn any of them that has a YouTube segment telling me how to pronounce the phrases. As for Samo, which she also suggested, I was lucky enough to get a Lyft driver from Samoa on my way to the train station in Tacoma, who taught me to say Malo (hello), Olé halo i goa (what is your name), and Tofa (good-bye). I also sat next to two students in a coffee shop who were learning sign langue, so they taught me how to say those three phrases in that language.

      Learning the languages is my second favorite item. Hugging 75 trees is my favorite. I've already hugged 74 trees, but I still want to hug blossoming trees this spring. Then I'll pick out the best tree-hugging pictures and make a book of them. Here's one, from Redwoods National Park, that'll certainly go in:

75 Prayers for the Earth and Humanity

      My Thanksgiving Day post for dianacoogle.blogspot.com was to list the first half of the 75 prayers for the Earth and humanity that I was challenged to write for the 75x75 project. Here is the rest of the list.

42. May the oceans stay cold and the glaciers hold their shapes.

43. May the chickens range free.

44. May the cows eat grass.

45. May the lambs cavort in pastures.

46. May the pigs live in peace.

47. May every queen bee have her hive.

48. May the rhinoceros live to see another century and more.

49. May every goose find her gander, every billy his nanny, and every hind her hart.

50. May the border wall never get built.

51. May governments never separate children from loving parents.

52. May the EPA return to its former days of integrity and enlightenment.

53. May our schools and universities serve their deepest purposes.

54. May our children and young people find fulfillment in their pursuits and joy in their lives.

55. May the wilds stay forever wild.

56. May the stars shine bright in clear skies all over the world.

57. May the lakes stay full and cold.

58. May the wilderness areas and the National Parks forever be places of soul renewal.

59. May the Supreme Court function with ethics, intelligence, and commitment to American democratic values, foregoing political considerations.

60. May there always be reason to rejoice.

61, May we always heal with laughter.

62. After four decades of war in Iraq: may it end.

63. May we learn to set aside our differences in order to pay tribute to what is best in each of us.

64. May there be clean drinking water everywhere on earth.

65. May the human species learn to live as one species among all the others, with equal respect for all.

66. May the current reversal of environmental protections be reversed back at least to where they were BDT.

67. May we show our love for Lady Nature so she will come back again.

68. May we learn to trust again.

69. May the plague of plastic be cleaned from the seas.

70. May the dolphins play and the whales sound the deep in peace.

71. May music resound everywhere in the world, always.

72. May the cities flourish with art, music, and the good works of the poets.

73. May we always butcher with gratitude the animals who give their lives so we may live.

74. May the eagle's eye be sharp, the deer's ear keen, and the bear's nose honed to every odor in the woods.

75. May the world and all its living beings thrive and prosper.

Age 75 Is No Stopping Point!

      My friend Wallace Kaufman gave me the 75x75 project of compiling a list of people who accomplished significant things in their lives after the age of 75. 

      The accomplishments make your jaw drop. For instance, there's Dr. Leila Denmark, who didn't retire as a practicing pediatrician until she was 103. She lived to be 114, the fourth-oldest-verified person in the world. AND SHE WAS MY DOCTOR, the pediatrician my mother took all her children to. I put her first in my book.

Dr. Denmark, with patient and patent's mother

      Other people in science, medicine, and economics include Dr. Ruth, who was still performing on TV when she was 79. 

      The next heading is "literature," with 14 names of people who have published after the age of 75. I love it that Roget was still overseeing editions of his famous thesaurus, which I still use, of course (so much better than the online thesaurus!), until he died at the age of 90. The poet Stanley Kunitz published an autobiography when he was 100, but my favorite entry here is the little known Harry Bernstein, who published his first book, an autobiographical novel, when he was 97 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship at the age of 98 "to pursue his writing." He published the third book in his series of autobiographical novels the following year and died the next year at the age of 100. 

      There are only three entries in the section of "Music," including pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who performed "one of his greatest recitals" in Carnegie Hall when he was 89.

     "Film and Theater" has five entries, some that you might expect – Jessica Tandy (Academy Award for Best Actress, Driving Miss Daisy – at age 80) and Christopher Plummer (Oscar at age 82, Beginners), but do you remember the 1984 Wendy's commercial, "Where's the beef?" Clara Peller, the actress in that commercial, was 81 and had only just been "discovered" as a feisty, spicy actress.

Clara Peller

      Next to "literature," with fourteen entries, "visual arts" suggests a field in which the artist can continue well into old age. There are ten entries in my book. You might have come up with Georgia O'Keeffe and Grandma Moses without too much thinking, but also included are Michelangelo, Marc Chagall, and a former slave from Alabama, Bill Traylor, who taught himself to paint at the age of 85, exhibited at 87, and had his New York debut at 89. My favorite entry is my mother, who had an art show when she was 88, of pastel paintings she had done with her left arm after a stroke left her right arm paralyzed.

      A omnigatherum of accomplishments in law, chess, religion, and aeronautics brings in four people (the 19th-century British Lord Chancellor Hardinga Giffard, Asa Long, Mary Baker Eddy, and John Glenn, respectively). Achievements in education include a number of advanced degrees at advanced ages (including the oldest college graduate ever, Nola Ochs, with a masters degree at age 99), but my favorite entry is the Kenyan Kimani Maruge, who entered first grade at the age of 84 and addressed the United Nations in New York (first time on an airplane) the following year, on the importance of free primary education.

Kimani Maruga, in first-grade class

      There are the statesmen and political activists, such as Ghandi and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (eight of them), but the biggest category by far is "physical achievements," with twenty entires, beginning with my father, who built a barn at the age of 80 and, between the ages of 85 and 95, turned a large wooden screw, on a lathe he made himself, for a historical village's reproduction of an ox-turned cotton baler .

      In this category are mountain climbers, sailors, runners (including  Fauja Singh, the first person to finish a marathon at 100), hikers, the highwire performer William Ivy Baldwin (who was 82 when he did his last highwire walk, over a canyon in Eldorado Springs, Colorado), one swimmer, one bungee jumper (at age 96), and one water skier (still skiing at 101). The most remarkable entry in the whole book, though, in my opinion, is Tao Porchon-Lynch, who is still teaching yoga at 100.

Tao Porchon-Lynch, in lotus position

     It looks like I have a lot to do after my 75th birthday in July!

Trees, Hikes, Strangers, Music, and Political Action

 In one weekend last week I fulfilled five repetitions of the 75 items on my list.

      1. Take 75 hikes (Phil Straffin, Marion Haddon). The Cameron Meadows trail, in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon, was a great way to add one more hike to the 75 I intend to do this year. (See  dianacoogle.blogspot.com for a description of this hike.) So far I've done 29 hikes since July 20.

      2. Hug 75 trees (Laura Martin). Not only was the trail spectacularly beautiful in its autumn finery, but it provided me with some great trees to hug – salmon-leafed dogwoods, yellow-splashed maples, and some huge old-growth cedars, firs, and pines. That I couldn't get my arms around the cedar didn't make the hug any less sincere than the one I gave the dogwood I could wrap arms and legs around.

I love incense cedars.

      3. Do 75 political actions (Mariposa Kerchival and Verne Underwood). Earlier in the week I had realized that with the election coming up in about two weeks, I had better step up my political actions now, so after Saturday's hike, I hurried to town to take part in a postcard writing campaign to get out the vote. The emphasis was on getting Jamie McLeod-Skinner elected. I started each post card: "Let's oust Walden!" It would be so exciting if McLeod-Skinner won this race. I, like a lot of people I know, would breathe a sigh of relief to send her to Washington instead of Walden.

      4. Listen to 75 pieces of new music from around the world (Chelsea and Tyler). The next day I went to the Rogue Valley Symphony concert and heard the world premier of Malek Jandali's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. Jandali is Syrian-American and had incorporated Syrian folk songs in his concerto, so it was certainly "new music from around the world." 

      5. Talk to 75 strangers (Sharon Coogle). During intermission, I turned to the woman sitting next to me, a stranger, and started a conversation. Was she with the two children and woman sitting on the other side of her? I was interested because the children were there on the voucher program the Friends of the Symphony have provided to bring young people to these concerts, and I wondered if the children were musicians. Yes, the woman was with them but not related, just a friend, and then she talked and talked and talked about herself, all about her HUD housing and moving here from Ashland and a long story about doing research on some little known event in World War I or the Revolutionary War or something I couldn't keep up with and wanting to go to Washington D.C. to look things up, something about her ancestors; I stopped trying to follow the story. I listened politely, but I was glad when intermission was finally over and she had to stop talking. It was not a good experience. It reminded me of why I don't talk to strangers.

      I had rather hug trees.

Doing "75 Things" in Georgia and Alabama

      Last week I made a trip to Georgia for a wedding in Alabama. Before the wedding my family and I walked through the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, where I had the great pleasure of hugging some trees.

Swamp magnolia

Toshino cherry

Common banana

      Usually, on an airplane, I sit in my seat and keep to myself, but on this trip I was determined to take advantage of the opportunity to talk to strangers. (I think I can;  I think I can.) My seat mate on the first plane looked Indian or mid-Eastern, so I was excited about asking him how to say "hello" "good-bye," and "what is your name?" in his native language, too, so I could check off two boxes in the 75s columns: "talk to 75 strangers" and "learn hello, good-bye, and what is your name? in 75 languages," but he seemed too involved in his computer work to interrupt, so I shrank into my usual shell and didn't bother him. On the return, however, I sat next to an interesting young woman with whom I had a nice conversation. It was easy.

       I took a hike on the Appalachian Trail with my brother and two sisters, too, while I was in Georgia. (I have now done 27 hikes and will do another today, so I'm doing well with this item.) It was a steep trail but a beautiful day, and we met a lot of people also hiking – families,  couples, day-hikers, backpackers. My sister, in front of me, chatted easily for a moment with each hiker. Behind her, I smiled, said, "Hi," and passed on by until I pointed out to her that I was the one who needed to talk to strangers. After that, she said, "Hi," and passed on by, letting me be the one to say, "Where did you camp last night? How long have you been out? How did you fare in the rain?" 

      It's my general modus operandi to smile, say, "Hi," and pass on by, but I'm learning that it's not difficult, in such a situation, to talk to a stranger and that it's pleasant and friendly and makes everyone feel good.

       I drank some new wine with my siblings, had three swims in Lake Lanier (where the four of us spent a couple of days at Laura's lake house), and gave a ton of compliments – Laura on how well she played Beethoven's piano sonata, Sharee on her new svelte figure, Lee on beautiful photographs from his raft trip in the Grand Canyon.

      When I returned home, I got a 75-minute massage. 

      I have now completed 23 of the 75 things to do in my 75th year.