THAT WAS GOOD THEN, THIS IS GOOD NOW

While looking for old photographs I found the photographs from the early 1990’s in which I am handling Jeannie’s boa constrictor, and put them out to show the staff. (Wish I could post it but it is an impossibility!) Had an epiphany when Raju, the cook, said, “what a change from then to now!” Whenever I look at my photos from the past I just see them as things of the past instead of confronting the metamorphosis that has occurred especially in the last few years in which the old me is gone: Physical, and mental/creative, too. Look at the language of my earlier work, and the simplicity of the books I am writing now. I marvel at my past powers, the youthful passion and excess, even as I prefer my style now, the clean simplicity of it. That was good then, and this is good now. A certain degree of subliminal worry is there – fears that my memory is going (there are so many girls from Welhams that my friend Renee mentions that I don’t remember), and the greatest fear – that my writing will be taken from me. Perhaps I should prepare for this inevitability now. How? : By remembering it and being grateful that it has been given to me now. What shall replace the gratitude when it is gone? I wouldn’t like to survive its departure. Or would something else replace it, like prayer and adoration? An outcome much to be desired. Or will I finally relax and putter through my days? I know that my pushing with my writing is because of a conscious awareness of my aging and the lack of time. This is what caused the sleeplessness. But really, I must think of all these things that are around the corner, but not let them paralyze me. Perhaps God will be kind and take me away while I am still at the computer.