Welcome to the time when you're not close to death, but you can see it from here. I struggled with that after my second retirement at your age or thereabouts, but started a new career and my own business the next day. Struggle over.
Today I'm 73, still running one business and mentoring some entrepreneurs, otherwise busy dying. I have multiple incurable fatal illnesses; I'm tracking empirical data that show some time in June or July of next year I go from "will probably wake up tomorrow" to "probably won't." It's liberating. I've never cared what others thought of me, and now I have an excuse.
I'm at peace with the situation. I tell my religious friends and acquaintances that, if they pray, only ask that God's will be done. Whatever it is, it will be better than I deserve. I'm sharing thoughts in my own substack, "One Foot in the Gravy." I've actually learned two things in life.
- Acceptance always beats understanding.
- Every day I am astounded by the growing vastness of my ignorance.
Is there a link for your substack home? People might be interested in visiting. I haven't figured out how to navigate all the different authors on the site.
BillHeath.Substack.com is the link. For now it's free. The title is "One Foot in the Gravy," explained in the first post. I ask that you not take time away from learning from better minds than mine (not a high bar to get over), such as Matt, to read my eclectic collection of thoughts on dying, being clumsy, and current events.
Each post gets somewhere between ten and twenty views, about the same as a Biden campaign rally.
This was a great read, thanks Matt and happy birthday. I think the reason I gravitate to your work is that even though you’re a journalist, deep down you write with the soul of a free-spirited artist and that comes through in your work.
That bit about the modern world demanding moral purity/clarity from its artists really hits home for me, and is getting more depressing by the minute to think about so I’d better find something else to do, haha.
Great non-news related post, thanks! The nose story reminds me of a scene in Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" where a character declares that he "Won't be led by the nose," whereupon the anti-hero Stavrogin proceeds to grab the fellow by the schnoz and drag him around the room to everyone's horror and dismay.
Another great soul. It makes me melancholy to think of this greatness and remember the lines from (?)Mothet Coursge (?), God help the nation that had no heroes. Replying: Help the nation that needs them.
Sort if misquoted-senior moments are my specialty.
That whole book is somewhat traumatizing. It's not a "literary classic" as much as it is a character sketch of a crazy person, paranoid and wracked with guilt. But he clearly had preexisting mental issues. It works nicely with Notes from Underground.
I won't disagree but I can remember that the book sucked me in so completely that I was always amazed, whenever I stopped reading, to look around and see I was still sitting in a room full of people.
Oh I loved it. I wasn't trying to disparage it. He really captures something, but I think people get caught up in the redemption-arc aspect which allows it to be a Literary Classic, when for me it was like a frantic heavy metal album. It was totally engrossing. A real work of art.
I agree with those who say Kafka is the prophet of our times. We are surely trapped in a faceless and impenetrable bureaucracy. Human madness and wiles don't matter anymore. The machine has won, and Kafka captured the essence of how it feels to live inside it. Anything outside the machine is merely starving and obsolete, with no access to anything resembling society.
I like this idea. It's a doomed idea, or an idea of doom, but maybe it keeps something alive in our polished & numb shopping-mall-society. I've vacillated between aiming for health according to society's norms (for the sake of making enough money to avoid homelessness) vs. appreciating & identifying with the vital life-force which gets mangled by these machinations, and which are older and dirtier anyway. Sorry if this juxtaposition isn't clear... I can try to clarify more but I won't presume to ramble unnecessarily.
Lol. I turned 44 two weeks ago. I don’t really feel that old. Except my oldest son is turning 15 in April which is making me freak out more than my age does. Our culture worships youth to the detriment of us all. We need to learn to value wisdom and grace.
A pup? Try zygote from someone who is turning 67. Gogol was everything you said he was; in addition to the stories,Dead Souls captured the utter corruption combined with his yearning for personal and national redemption. Who else at that time could have caught the issues and personal foibles in The Inspector General? Maybe Dickens or later Trollope in English,
Interesting if maybe apocryphal story about the later. If true it shows that the leadership had a very good idea as to what was going on, if no sensible ideas about what to do about it When the Inspector General came up, the censors tabled it in toto. Somehow Nicholas I, the most reactionary Tsar of all, got a hold of it, read it and over rode them. Indeed he insisted that he see it in public and was heard to say to courtiers “We deserve everything we got, especially me!
Thank you for this post. I hadn’t thought of him in years,
“Gogol would not do well in the modern world, which demands that artists be great people in addition to providing clear moral direction in their work.”
Biden’s POC spokesxir Cardi B’s “Wet Ass Pussy” was awarded song of the year. She also admitted to drugging and raping johns in her earlier career as a journalist...er, prostitute.
Yeah, this seemed gratuitous not to mention stunningly ill-considered in an otherwise fine piece. I can easily make a list of 100 contemporary artists who are not great, and often bad people who provide immoral direction, yet are successful and admired.
I suppose it all revolves around one's definition of artist. I can honestly say that I've never looked at Cardi B and thought "artist." Actually I try to never ever have to look at Cardi B.
For me calling someone an "artist" is a job description, not a measure of quality. Otherwise I'd strip that designation from 9/10 of the painters, sculptors, writers, designers, not to mention actors and musicians I encounter.
I don't disagree but, after a little thought, I think that plastic homogenized dumbed down America deserves Cardi B.
She's probably a good reflection of all the young girls with multiple babies to multiple baby daddies who think that showing their titties on the internet is somehow "empowering."
Yep that's me. A hateful little Puritan. Personally can't wait till we resurrect the gibbet for you liberal whiners who feel compelled to virtue signal at every fucking opportunity.
Since you have a soft spot for youngsters who are apparently too stupid to use birth control but bright enough to fuck maybe we can start deducting their welfare check upkeep solely from your paycheck.
You're a modernly moral liberal who cares, I'm sure you'd have no fucking problem with that at all.
Oh wait, liberals want everyone else to pay for their virtues.
She is representative of a certain class of people who think rolling on molly/purple drank in inner suburb Red Lobster or Applebee’s w/ purple hair and live-streaming it is the height of coolness-or whatever term the kids use now....
It’s matter of quality, not morality. Bushwick BillThe Geto Boys have backstories every bit as depraved or more than Cardi B, but “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster” or “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” are insightful on a level Miss B could only dream of-and wouldn’t be touched by D politicians looking for cool cred.
Brother Matt, very happy to read this. I died laughing at Diary of a Madman when I was about 18, and probably scared people on the L Train in New York, where I used the time to read Dead Souls on the way to work. People expect literature to be a drag and are usually, for some reason, especially displeased when I tell them how funny Dead Souls is. They can't see the humor in a book with a title like that, nor in Dostoevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, Proust. Bellow kills me as well, another writer who remains under read and under appreciated. All of them presumed to be dull and serious, but actually fucking hilarious if you just open up your eyes. Do you rate any living American novelists as worth the time? I browse the new books, I read a bit here and there, I'm not impressed and I usually return to my old dead writers.
"...and died covered in Twitter trolls instead of leeches."
That is some inspired imagery, even if the masses on Twitter find it most unflattering.
The masses on Twitter are welcome to pay for a subscription here.
I think the leeches should find it unflattering.
Dear Still Wet Behind the Ears,
Welcome to the time when you're not close to death, but you can see it from here. I struggled with that after my second retirement at your age or thereabouts, but started a new career and my own business the next day. Struggle over.
Today I'm 73, still running one business and mentoring some entrepreneurs, otherwise busy dying. I have multiple incurable fatal illnesses; I'm tracking empirical data that show some time in June or July of next year I go from "will probably wake up tomorrow" to "probably won't." It's liberating. I've never cared what others thought of me, and now I have an excuse.
I'm at peace with the situation. I tell my religious friends and acquaintances that, if they pray, only ask that God's will be done. Whatever it is, it will be better than I deserve. I'm sharing thoughts in my own substack, "One Foot in the Gravy." I've actually learned two things in life.
- Acceptance always beats understanding.
- Every day I am astounded by the growing vastness of my ignorance.
Is there a link for your substack home? People might be interested in visiting. I haven't figured out how to navigate all the different authors on the site.
BillHeath.Substack.com is the link. For now it's free. The title is "One Foot in the Gravy," explained in the first post. I ask that you not take time away from learning from better minds than mine (not a high bar to get over), such as Matt, to read my eclectic collection of thoughts on dying, being clumsy, and current events.
Each post gets somewhere between ten and twenty views, about the same as a Biden campaign rally.
This was a great read, thanks Matt and happy birthday. I think the reason I gravitate to your work is that even though you’re a journalist, deep down you write with the soul of a free-spirited artist and that comes through in your work.
That bit about the modern world demanding moral purity/clarity from its artists really hits home for me, and is getting more depressing by the minute to think about so I’d better find something else to do, haha.
Great non-news related post, thanks! The nose story reminds me of a scene in Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" where a character declares that he "Won't be led by the nose," whereupon the anti-hero Stavrogin proceeds to grab the fellow by the schnoz and drag him around the room to everyone's horror and dismay.
I love that book, just reread it. Dostoyevsky worshipped Gogol btw.
Another great soul. It makes me melancholy to think of this greatness and remember the lines from (?)Mothet Coursge (?), God help the nation that had no heroes. Replying: Help the nation that needs them.
Sort if misquoted-senior moments are my specialty.
Reading Crime & Punishment got me through jury duty, an otherwise 3 day journey to extreme boredom.
That whole book is somewhat traumatizing. It's not a "literary classic" as much as it is a character sketch of a crazy person, paranoid and wracked with guilt. But he clearly had preexisting mental issues. It works nicely with Notes from Underground.
I won't disagree but I can remember that the book sucked me in so completely that I was always amazed, whenever I stopped reading, to look around and see I was still sitting in a room full of people.
Oh I loved it. I wasn't trying to disparage it. He really captures something, but I think people get caught up in the redemption-arc aspect which allows it to be a Literary Classic, when for me it was like a frantic heavy metal album. It was totally engrossing. A real work of art.
I agree with those who say Kafka is the prophet of our times. We are surely trapped in a faceless and impenetrable bureaucracy. Human madness and wiles don't matter anymore. The machine has won, and Kafka captured the essence of how it feels to live inside it. Anything outside the machine is merely starving and obsolete, with no access to anything resembling society.
I like this idea. It's a doomed idea, or an idea of doom, but maybe it keeps something alive in our polished & numb shopping-mall-society. I've vacillated between aiming for health according to society's norms (for the sake of making enough money to avoid homelessness) vs. appreciating & identifying with the vital life-force which gets mangled by these machinations, and which are older and dirtier anyway. Sorry if this juxtaposition isn't clear... I can try to clarify more but I won't presume to ramble unnecessarily.
Life is but an unfortunate interlude between two eternities of bliss.
And how the hell do you know that there was bliss before life? Do you remember anything from that point in time? And who knows what lies beyond death?
One can go crazy trying to read too much into aphorisms.
Lol. I turned 44 two weeks ago. I don’t really feel that old. Except my oldest son is turning 15 in April which is making me freak out more than my age does. Our culture worships youth to the detriment of us all. We need to learn to value wisdom and grace.
"grasping the awful truth: we all, eventually, run out of patches" damn that cuts deep.
I still have a few more.
A pup? Try zygote from someone who is turning 67. Gogol was everything you said he was; in addition to the stories,Dead Souls captured the utter corruption combined with his yearning for personal and national redemption. Who else at that time could have caught the issues and personal foibles in The Inspector General? Maybe Dickens or later Trollope in English,
Interesting if maybe apocryphal story about the later. If true it shows that the leadership had a very good idea as to what was going on, if no sensible ideas about what to do about it When the Inspector General came up, the censors tabled it in toto. Somehow Nicholas I, the most reactionary Tsar of all, got a hold of it, read it and over rode them. Indeed he insisted that he see it in public and was heard to say to courtiers “We deserve everything we got, especially me!
Thank you for this post. I hadn’t thought of him in years,
Thank you for this very funny column. I won't tell you my age, except to say I too have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker.
Thank you from a Simply (un)Pleasant Lady.
"Youth is wasted on the young."
Your existence is a balm for our mental health.
So you're 51. That's a milestone, in a way. I was in denial of aging until I got past 50, but now, at 62, that's no longer tenable.
Thanks for the Gogol. I will commit this line to memory: "[R]ecoil[ing] in horror, grasping the awful truth: we all, eventually, run out of patches."
“Gogol would not do well in the modern world, which demands that artists be great people in addition to providing clear moral direction in their work.”
Biden’s POC spokesxir Cardi B’s “Wet Ass Pussy” was awarded song of the year. She also admitted to drugging and raping johns in her earlier career as a journalist...er, prostitute.
Yeah, this seemed gratuitous not to mention stunningly ill-considered in an otherwise fine piece. I can easily make a list of 100 contemporary artists who are not great, and often bad people who provide immoral direction, yet are successful and admired.
I suppose it all revolves around one's definition of artist. I can honestly say that I've never looked at Cardi B and thought "artist." Actually I try to never ever have to look at Cardi B.
For me calling someone an "artist" is a job description, not a measure of quality. Otherwise I'd strip that designation from 9/10 of the painters, sculptors, writers, designers, not to mention actors and musicians I encounter.
I don't disagree but, after a little thought, I think that plastic homogenized dumbed down America deserves Cardi B.
She's probably a good reflection of all the young girls with multiple babies to multiple baby daddies who think that showing their titties on the internet is somehow "empowering."
It's not my thing either but for a song to be that popular it must appeal to more people than the subjects of your creepy Puritan hate fantasies.
Yep that's me. A hateful little Puritan. Personally can't wait till we resurrect the gibbet for you liberal whiners who feel compelled to virtue signal at every fucking opportunity.
Since you have a soft spot for youngsters who are apparently too stupid to use birth control but bright enough to fuck maybe we can start deducting their welfare check upkeep solely from your paycheck.
You're a modernly moral liberal who cares, I'm sure you'd have no fucking problem with that at all.
Oh wait, liberals want everyone else to pay for their virtues.
I forgot.
My bad.
She is representative of a certain class of people who think rolling on molly/purple drank in inner suburb Red Lobster or Applebee’s w/ purple hair and live-streaming it is the height of coolness-or whatever term the kids use now....
There's a disconnect in how "great people" is defined. Cardi B qualifies because she's woke. Mr. Theresa would not qualify if she were unwoke.
Mother, not Mister.
It’s matter of quality, not morality. Bushwick BillThe Geto Boys have backstories every bit as depraved or more than Cardi B, but “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster” or “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” are insightful on a level Miss B could only dream of-and wouldn’t be touched by D politicians looking for cool cred.
Beautiful piece. Thank you.
Brother Matt, very happy to read this. I died laughing at Diary of a Madman when I was about 18, and probably scared people on the L Train in New York, where I used the time to read Dead Souls on the way to work. People expect literature to be a drag and are usually, for some reason, especially displeased when I tell them how funny Dead Souls is. They can't see the humor in a book with a title like that, nor in Dostoevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, Proust. Bellow kills me as well, another writer who remains under read and under appreciated. All of them presumed to be dull and serious, but actually fucking hilarious if you just open up your eyes. Do you rate any living American novelists as worth the time? I browse the new books, I read a bit here and there, I'm not impressed and I usually return to my old dead writers.
Reread Demons this summer and FD predicted the future.
Great Russian writers tend to be utterly miserable human beings.
There might be a correlation.