from Gilbert Sorrentino's last work, The Abyss of Human Illusion:
“In his old age, childless and thrice-divorced, with all of his old friends either dead, sick or gone to sunbaked funereal places that were beyond his wish even to imagine them, Arthur began, one day, with no plan to speak of, to tote up, idly, to be sure, his grievances: the slights he’d endured, the insults, the petty humiliations unanswered and unavenged. He listed the unreciprocated kindnesses he’d shown others, the unanswered letters, the snubs, hurts, bad manners revealed, the advantage taken of him by those he had considered friends, or, at the least, not enemies. The project, if it may be given such a name, overwhelmed him, and he began to recover incidents, long forgotten, that he added, painstakingly and precisely, to his cruel catalog. He felt as if driven before a wholly unexpected avalanche.”
The great thing about aging is that the complex mental action it takes to compile and remember the list of all the wrongs is no longer quite possible. We start living in the moment simply because brain function isn't what it used to be. I was quite affected when I saw fairly recent photos of Jack Gilbert, now in dementia, this once-avatar or high-IQ severity looking out of it and cherubically happy.
Posted by: oriana ivy | June 03, 2010 at 03:22 PM