poetic poem

Poetry

 

Braided, spun, coiled in ritual

Silk, Yucca, Willow, Wool

Strand by strand

Earth-stained fingers and fibers bind

Pattern, art, story, function

Strand by strand

Vessels to carry and celebrate

Swaddled newborns, elders’ tales

Strand by strand

Shouts, tears, and laughter snagged

Woven moments

Strand by strand

 

Reflection and Projection

I have always failed miserably at celebrating the New Year’s holiday in a proper fashion. Last night was no exception; I climbed into bed at 10:30pm mountain standard time, read for a short while  and was asleep before 11:30. I justified the early to bed New Year’s eve by telling myself the ball had already dropped in Times Square – the climax of the Dick Clark New Year’s special – and that I had watched fireworks fill the sky over Sydney’s famed opera house on CNN.com hours before. What more was there to wait up for?

So here it is, 2009. I have no New Year’s resolutions to pursue, no remains from a party to clean, and no hangover to nurse. I got up this morning and tended to the pets then finished washing the stack of dishes I had given up on last night. One might say the year slipped by me unnoticed. I disagree. I am a firm believer that the human mind can settle into the past or future and miss the moment of life one is living all too easily. Therefore,  364 days out of the year I strive to be present focused; to live mindfully in the moment. Yesterday, I took a break from the present and took stock of the past and looked toward the future and today I feel a bit more reset on my path through life.

While I may not have stayed up to watch the clock pass from the last minute of 2008 to the first minute of 2009, I did commemorate the passing of time in my own way.  I took some time on Dec. 31, 2008 to reflect on the ending year – the challenges, the suprises, the happy moments – and of course, I dabbled in some day dreaming of hopes and expectations for 2009. I decided 2008 had been a calmer year than its recent predecessors- less life changes, more answers to the question marks even a solid plan in life leaves in its wake. Sadly there seemed to be fewer adventures this year than last, as money and time were tighter than usual. And yet in their place was a clearer picture of stability and serenity and more adventures in the not so distant future. I made my annual list of personal criticisms and goals for self-change. On that great scale of immaterial have and have nots, I weighed in heavily on the haves.  I marked the landmark events that I have to anticipate in 2009 in red pen on the calendar. And of course, I anxiously await the unknowns of what 2009 will hold and how it will shape my ever-changing plans in life.

For me, the New Year’s holiday is a time to examine the past and revisit goals for the future. I look at myself as a token piece on a board game. I examine the path I’m on and know this a chance to exchange the cards in my hand, to review my strategy, to pick up my piece and move to a different path if I choose. And then I acknowledge the luck of the draw and the chances that come with rolling the dice.

 

Holiday Jitters

My symptoms started shortly before Thanksgiving and have been gaining strength ever since. It started with a seemingly innocent bowl of Hershey’s kisses in our office. As the kisses began to dwindle, more sweets filled the bowl in their place. Then of course there was the fateful Thanksgiving dinner, which for my family included 4 pies and a batch of persimmon pudding distributed among eight people! Over the three weeks since Thanksgiving, my work place has been in constant supply of fresh, home-made goodies either displayed on our secretary’s desk for the taking or sitting in my box concealed in tidy little packages with notes of holiday cheer and nothing but a flimsy ribbon separating me from the treats within. Alas, it is the holiday season and I am running on sugar and trying not to crash.

A month-long sugar rush in and of itself is survivable with few side-effects. There have been years when I have experienced and truly enjoyed the holidays in a sugar-induced hypo-manic state. However, the confounding effect of the chaos of the holiday season, the end-of-the-year rush, and my propensity of anxiety makes for a jittery holiday season this year. So why don’t I stop eating the sweets you might say – and I agree it would be a wise thing to do. However, I have been roped into sugar at a biological level.

If I go several hours without a bit of something sweet, my blood sugar crashes and on comes the light headedness, fuzzy thinking, weakness in my limbs, and general irritability. So I eat the foil-wrapped chocolate nugget, the cookie, the slice of egg nog bread, the fudge, and I feel an instant buzz through my veins. My thoughts speed up and race ahead causing me to get lost in whatever I am trying to focus on in the moment. My heart pounds and my startle response becomes easily triggered leading me to believe I should be worried about something. And of course, there is plenty to worry over during the holidays; there’s shopping for presents, sending out cards, making food, criticizing myself for eating too much food, traveling, end of the year duties at work, making sweets for work…the list goes on.

And so here I sit – my right leg bobbing like a sewing machine needle and a cup of hot coco nearby – trying to focus on wrapping up this ramble. Of course, this jittery feeling isn’t just about worrying. As a child I remember being wound up for weeks on candy-canes and the excitement of Christmas. The sugar fueled my anticipation of a day when I got to stay in my pajamas, eat my favorite foods and get new toys then travel to my grandparents’ house for more presents and fun with my cousins. I still feel that anticipatory energy flowing through me and building as each sweet week passes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This time of year is a time of self-indulgence and sharing with others; and sugary treats have become a tried and true means for both. Thus, my sweet holiday jitters are fueled  not just by worries but by the excited anticipation of visiting with family, exchanging gifts, welcomed time off from work, days of lounging around in my PJs, and bundling up to play in the snow.

 

Meeting Morning

The power of defining oneself as “not a morning person” struck me once again at 4am, mountain time as I clung to my covers, twisted and turned from one sleepless position to the next and tried to convince myself that I was not awake. How could I be? It was 4am. Five layers of blankets separating me from the 50 degree house, the warm sleeping cat curled into the crescent sleeping on my side creates, the absolute darkness, the 3 hours my alarm still had to count down before screaming, counting my breathes – none of these things soothed me back to sleep. Something was wrong. At quarter to five I eased myself from the layers of quilts and conceded to wakefulness.

To my surprise the morning hours before sunlight tints the sky are not that bad when not forced to approach them by a relentless alarm and an ever encroaching deadline to leave the house.

I enjoyed a productive, caffeine-free morning. Any other day and the words “productive” “caffeine-free” and “morning” could not truthfully be put together in a sentence that applied to me.  But by 5:30am I was dressed for the day with the pets fed, the dog  let out and back in, and the dishes from last night’s meal done. By 6:30 I had finished breakfast (with water rather than coffee or tea!), wandered around feeling as though I should be rushing to something and after several minutes of finding nothing to rush to, realized that on this particular Monday morning there was nothing left for me to do but relax. I gathered a couple of books to choose from and started toward the couch; it was then that I heard it. I noticed the sound of no music, no clattering from the other room, no one talking, no pets scampering over the hardwood floors.  It was – I believed – quite. Every other living being was asleep behind a closed door. I was alone in a quite house with hours to fill. An excitement I had not felt in months closed in resulting in a giddiness akin to seeing an old friend for the first time in years. I opened my computer and began to write.

And so – after months of neglect – I have a  new post for the blog. On the horizon is a break in my busy schedule when I hope to be able to ramble more frequently. Also new today is a posting on my photoblog at: eyewonders.wordpress.com – check it out and check back here soon!

 

painting with words

After a thorough search of all the obvious and not so obvious places I thought the cord for my camera’s battery charger might be; and several weeks of waiting in hopes that it would turn up on its own – I’ve decided to face the harsh reality that I am and will continue to be cameraless until I can afford to replace my point-and shoot camera with a DSLR set-up. (I won’t bore you with my reasons for not buying a new battery charger, but trust me, I know it’s an option and I’ve decided not to opt for it). Knowing that I cannot capture the spectacle of the Colorado Rockies in the Fall on film (or pixels as it would be) I will have to fall back on the time-honored tradition of words to tell their beauty. After all, writing is an art. For weeks, the mountainsides have been taunting me with their intricate color-blocks – daring me to blogg about them without a camera to back me up. Today, I’m taking the challenge.

The mountains always have an assortment of color on display if you know where to look for it. Aspens’ bright green leaves and long, lean trunks of off-white bark splice the dense hunter green boughs of the evergreens. An occasional blue spruce adds yet another hue. Further down, the rough reddish brown bark of pinon pines add yet another variation in color as their branches display their own hue of green needles – sparser than the evergreens further up the slope – they spread their needles in thin dangling clumps off their long branches so that patches of grey granite and the lighter greens of the mountains’ shrubs peak through. Closer to the forest floor, the flora are greatly varied from grasses to shrubs to those precious flowers that remain sparse but present until the harsh frosts set in- purple Columbines, red Indian Paint-Brush, blue and white Western Blue Flag. In all but the spring season, the color these small plants add to the mountain are a gift for those eyes who venture into the forest and walk under the trees. From mid-summer to early Fall the granite caps of these great mountains touch the sun emitting a steel-grey appearance or are lost in the white and grey of passing clouds. Iron-rich cross-cuts of rocks sliced by the glaciers of the ice-age, tower above tree line adding their own mark of color to the mountain. The rest of the year, these peaks on down to their basins are a bright white. But again, these colors are seen only when you look for them.

In the fall, the mountains put their colorful quilts on display; hanging blocks of yellow, red, orange, and green on their great slopes. It starts slowly – a patch of green turning to gold on a single Aspen branch, a scrub-oak exchanging its water conscious green leaves for the efficiency of orange and red. Then suddenly, the mountainsides catch on fire – gold, orange, and red dominate but they cannot subdue the dark green patches of the evergreens who hold their ground. A single tree or shrub stitches an array of color to make its block on the grand display. Patches of snow begin to fill-in rocky grey peaks. And slowly, the sun rises later and sets earlier, the air becomes more temperate but with a chill, and brown begins to take the place of color in all but the evergreens.

 

show me the money

Witness the continued downfall of major US money-lenders through my favorite news-spots online tickers,  I have begun to realize what a mystery this business of banking really is. Billions of dollars have been lost – How? Where on earth did such a large amount of money disappear to so quickly? I realize the answer to this involves a complex web of transactions in which money is collect from some and given to others and somewhere within the process others still make (or at least used to make) a profit somewhere along the way. So when billions of dollars have been lost I am a bit baffled that the world keeps on turning with the only immediate impact being bad days on Wall Street. Naive – yes, very. I would add that I am also earning a low enough income that if it weren’t for the media’s relentless coverage I would not know that billions of dollars have disappeared spurring a national ecomonic crisis or sorts because such a loss doesn’t seem to effect my daily life in any significant manner – which I can appreciate. However, I find it hard to imagine how the loss of such great sums of money can be unnoticeable by anyone. A mystery indeed.

 

A writer’s role-models

I settled myself amidst the dirt and dust that clings to the hard wood floors of the living room like a fleas to a dog despite my best efforts at cleaning (which I must admit has led to overall less sweeping and mopping thus fortifying the layers of filth). I crossed my legs, placed a notebook and pen on the floor beside me, and used the palms of my hands to inch myself forward. The order I had tried to keep in the bookshelves – alphabetical by genre – had deteriorated to such a point that any hope of finding a book quickly was lost. Between the merging marriage brings and the callousness that develops after moving seven times in three and half years, my obsessive-compulsive tendencies surrounding such matters have eased. I allowed myself a few more seconds to lament the loss of order, then moved on to more enjoyable pursuits.

First came James Joyce’s Dubliner’s, then What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, followed by Hemingway’s In Our Time. The rest of the books tumbled from the shelves onto my unsteady piles with ease. When I finished, I sat in a sea of paperbacks – broken bindings stacked precariously upon one another, uneven colored tags flagging stories I’d previously found exceptional or that I’d been assigned to read at some point or another in my undergraduate years. I savored my piles, flipping through the tables of contents in anthologies, reading notes I’d written in the margins at a time when making such annotations made me feel smarter (and to be honest, those notes proved to be time savers while writing many a paper for Kenyon’s renowned English department faculty to scrutinize). And so, I passed several hours reacquainting myself with the authors who had introduced me to the remarkable craft of writing short stories.

You see, I realized that I was getting back into writing a few steps ahead of myself. While writing regularly on the blog is a good, habit-forming practice and keeps the dust off my fingers – I was a bit presumptuous in thinking the prose would start flowing into beautiful story lines rich with character development when I brought up a blank Word screen. So I’ve decided to start at the beginning. This means reading the stories written by my role-models: James Baldwin, Rick Bass, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce Carol Oats, Flannery O’Connor, Annie Proulx, and John Updike – to name a dozen. 

Amid the reading, there will still be writing. After all, I have an entire collection of short stories swimming in my head; characters whose personas have been simmering for years, plot-lines that are begining to take shape. I have started to put some of it on paper – okay, not paper per say, but the Word documents have been opened and saved to a folder on my hard drive that says “Writing,” as well as a memory stick for safe keeping. Flipping through the stories I aspire to as a writer just gives me that much more motivation to slog on. Oh what fun the reading process of writing can be!

To end, I’ll leave you with my top four writing inspirations- yes, four because I cannot figure out which one I would not include to make a tidy three and I cannot decide of a fifth that I should like to add. The following all concisely tell of a fleeting moment in life which captures basic human emotions and relations at their finest – the definition of what I think a short story should be:

• Raymond Carver: Cathedral
• Ernest Hemingway: Hills Like White Elephants
• James Joyce: Araby
• John Updike: A&P

(I may not have my bookshelves organized these days but I can still alphabetize with the best of them!)

 

slow-going garden

At first I didn’t believe the squash were real. It wasn’t until mid-June that I planted my “garden” (consisting of three plants: green bell pepper, cherry tomato, and yellow squash) in the sun showered corner at the front of our house after two days of reclaiming the flowerbeds from years of overgrown grass. And I admit, I was not hopeful. Still I faithfuly churned the clay-ridden earth and mix in nutrient rich soil, watered the plants religiously, and waited.  

By mid-August the pepper plant had been the most productive of the three, yielding a small, slightly bitter pepper. The squash plant continued its trend of producing beautiful orange and yellow flowers and nothing else and the tomato plant was growing bushier by the day without any sign of tomatoes budding.

Well, I thought, it was worth a try.

I continued to water the plants and occasionally inspected the tomato plant for any signs of fruit. I’ve never seen a tomato plant not deliver. And I was not to be disappointed. Just last Thursday a gleaming red ball caught my eye as I walked by the garden. By Friday I had picked enough tomatoes to warrant a salad; more ripened and another bowl was filled after Labor Day weekend. Heading into September with one pepper grown and an ever full bowl of cherry tomatoes I felt content.

You can imagine my surprise then when I saw the thin, elongated yellow shoots extending from the leaves of the squash plant. As I edged closer I saw not one but two small, crooked neck squash growing from the stalks. That was Monday. Today there are three!  I must confess a slight feeling of guilt, since I had written off the squash plant as a failed effort weeks ago. Perhaps I will weed today to make amends.

     So, does anyone have a good recipe involving yellow squash?

 

The Road Less Travelled

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(last stanza of Robert Frost’s Road Not Taken)

As I desperately tried not to look down the steep, Aspen dense slope that dropped off abruptly to the car’s left as we crawled over rocks and sunk into ditches on our latest road-less-travelled escapade (unwittingly done in my Subaru forester with tread-worn tires, but that’s a story for later in the blog), I began to recognize the situation as oddly familiar. In fact, I could recall three other recent occasions that had sent me edging across the passenger seat trying to get as close to the center console as possible while still being able to grip the door handle with enough force to turn my knuckles white. As I sat with my eyes pinched shut and focused on taking deep breathes, I began to wonder: why do I keep ending up in these situations?

And so I began to recall the harrowing dirt and gravel roads I have found myself on four fear-instilling times since March. Each time I ended up on a road less traveled, I decided that these roads are less traveled because most people choose to stick to less exposed, safer feeling routes of travel. Don’t get me wrong, each road has afforded views that the standard road can’t get close to. However, each has also included dizzying switchbacks alongside plunging drop-offs. Of course, there are no guard rails either. I’ve been told that guard rails provide people with a false sense of security on such roads. Well after driving and/or riding up and down the following four scenic and sketchy roads, I’d take any feeling of security – false or not.  So without further ado, here are the roads in chronological order: The Moki Dugway, Mineral Bottom road to the Labrynith Canyon take-out, the Burr Trail, and the 4×4 off-chute of the Mt. Bachelor mining tour loop.

The Moki Dugway:a grated, steep, switchbacked road in Cedar Mesa that winds its way to the top of a mesa known to have spectacular Anazasi ruins and petroglyphs hidden in its many canyons

(No pictures of the road are available because I didn’t know it would be one of four-part series of hair-raising events. However, you can check out the handful of pictures from this trip and others to Cedar Mesa on Picasa.  

Had I known what was in store on the other 3 roads described here, this road probably wouldn’t have made my fear-instilling list. But at the time – without the comparisons to come – it was unnerving. If I drive up it again it would probably make me uneasy; but the very fact that I am willing to go up it again in the driver’s seat puts it in a different category from the others.

Mineral Bottom Road: steep dirt road plunging from Dead Horse Mesa ‘s edge down 900 feet to the Colorado River’s bank; it is a constantly switch-backing road with exposure to sheer canyon cliffs dropping to/rising from the CO river always at your side

View of Mineral Bottom Road

 [Note: these pictures were taken by my sister-in-law on our way up Mineral Bottom after the Labrynith Canyon river trip (hence the rafts being towed by the Jeep). Since we were “just running a shuttle” on the way down, I hadn’t thought about taking my camera … not that I would have had steady enough hands to use it then anyway.]

My husband did not forewarn me of the road to come. However, I later found out that when we turned west off SR 313, he had told my father “we’re going to drive down a dirt long for a long time and then drop off the edge of the earth.” Perhaps it’s best that he hadn’t prepared me because his description of Mineral Bottom road was exactly right. I found myself in the driver’s seat going down Mineral Bottom road as the sun was producing one strong, blinding glow of daylight before it slipped behind the canyon walls, driving my father-in-law’s relatively new Rav 4. My father from WV was behind me in my sister-in-law’s Subaru; driving stick for the first time in years. Then there was my husband blazing down the switchbacks in his Jeep, sitting on his roll bars while taking the occasional break to wait for us catch-up. It was slow-going at 5 miles an hour or less. There were times I had to stop the car to calm my breathing before I could ease my foot off the breaks a bit and inch around yet another terrifying turn. There were tears, there was anger, but mostly a sense of panic and an strong wish that the whole situation would just go away. In the end, I made it through and happily conceded the driver’s seat to my husband for the drive up (the Jeep and Subaru were left at the river’s take-out, as we were running a shuttle). I must say, on Mineral Bottom Road going up is far better than going down.

A google search of “Mineral Bottom Road” produced this Youtube video of a drive down it.

The Burr Trail: this grated dirt road is a turn off of another dirt road miles from any sign of civilization; it winds its way up and over Capital Reef National Park in a series of exposed switchbacks before winding its way into the Escalante Grand Staircase and dead-ending into Rt.12 at Boulder, UT

Burr Trail Switchbacks

As the locale should indicate, this road travels through an awe-inspiring landscapes that are on scale to massive to capture with a camera. Of course, I tried. When compared to Mineral Bottom road or the 4×4 Mt. Bachelor off-chute, this road is not nearly as terrifying. Though I would not care to take the driver’s seat and never want to drive or ride down the switchbacks we went up, I could sit shot-gun and enjoy the views doing up again some day; but I would still close my eyes in a few places.

4×4 road off the Mt. Bachelor Loop: one lane, dirt road that meanders east and north of the grated, scenic Mt. Bachelor loop just outside of Creede, CO; it provides the 4×4 enthusiast with mild rock and dug-out challenges that would be a day of easy fun if you could stomach the road’s edge giving way to dramatic drop-offs down steep mountain sides

After such a description, you may be wondering why this road ranks up there with driving down (verses riding up) Mineral Bottom road as a most gut-wrenching vehicular experience. A simple explanation should due – and of course, I will expound a bit more given the verbose trend this post has taken. Ignoring the large red letters stating “YOU ARE HERE” with an arrow pointing to the intersection of the Mt. Bachelor loop road and the 4×4 road, my husband and I continued eastward past the sign in my 2001 Subaru Forester, Maggie – which is badly in need of new tires – onto what we thought was the scenic, unpaved road touring the old mining ruins outside of Creede, CO. As you have probably guessed, we were not on the the Mt. Bachelor scenic loop. It was to our west and we were naively winding our way high into steep mountain slopes in a Subaru Forester; our raised Jeep with all-terrain tires sitting in our driveway, 125 miles away. Oh the irony. I have no pictures of the accent up this road (I was to terrified to move, let along snap pictures). What picturesI do have came before we realized our mistake in taking this road. From the valley floor, the wooded mountainsides – just beginning to hint at fall with patches of gold sprouting here and there – concealed what was yet to come. I did find it odd that it was only when the dirt road dumped us down a long, steep incline onto a grated, gravel road did we begin to see mine ruins.  By this time the breaks on my Subaru were smoking and we figured it was better to call it a day than complete the correct 17 mile loop. We’d had a wonderful time in Creede, CO and plan to return – but next time, I’m staying far away from the 4×4 loop, even if we bring the Jeep. To his credit, my husband got Maggie through the road with all people, dog, cargo, and – most notably – car intact. Recalling this test of his off-road skills, he informed me on our drive back to Durango that “I had your car on 2 wheels at one point” . . . So much for ignorance as bliss.

 Returning to my question raised at the start of this blog: why do I keep ending up in these situations?

I would say because my husband owns a Jeep – but the Jeep only accounts for the Burr Trail adventure. Thus the more likely reason is that I have learned that road less travelled by often affords the greatest views. I complain about my stomach rising to my throat and shortness of breath due to exposed roads. But what really takes my breath away is the beauty of the mountains, canyons, and mesas that I have scene on this unbeaten paths.

 

            And that has made all the difference.

 

Wrinkles

Glance through any form of media – television, magazines, newspaper ads – and the message is clear: we must take a preemptive strike against aging by using any number of potions, peels, lasers, and surgeries.

A brief story from real life: I visited a department store make-up counter before my wedding last year (note I was 26 then) to pick up the some of the basics for the big day and before I knew it I was being offered anti-aging cream along with another, specialized ointment to address the wrinkles the cosmologist had noticed forming at the corners of my eyes. She went on to warn me about other areas of my face that were gaining crease lines and would turn into wrinkles soon if I did not start on an age-defying skin care regiment. When I declined to purchase any of these magic liniments the cosmologist appeared dumbfounded.

I don’t think her reaction was due to money lost on the sale (since I had not bought make-up in over five years, I had accumulated quite the tab just sticking to foundation, blush, mascara, etc). I think it was my lack of fear that threw her for a loop. After all she had held up a magnifying mirror to point out areas of concern. Couldn’t I see the crease marks? Didn’t I know they’d get worse? 

What is frightening to me is the thought of my body not aging with me; to grow to be a stranger in my own skin. I want some one to look at me  when I am 70 – really look at me – and as I tell my story, see my words reflected by the creases on my face, the cracks and calluses on my hands, the uneven pigment of my skin, the tough soles of my feet, my sagging breasts, and the youthful yet wise gleam in my eyes. I want people to know that I have laughed in the sun many times in my life, that I have squinted, that I have cried, that I have walked barefoot on grass, dirt, and rocks, that I have raised children of my own, and that I am proud. I want people to look at me and see that I have lived a rich life. I want people to look at me when I am 70 and see me. I want people to acknowledge that I’m growing old and  to respect me as an elder.  I want to feel beautiful in my own skin. Along with that, I feel the need to mention that I am terrified of the sun damage I have done to my nose and hope that I get off the hook without skin cancer in 40 years. I’ve learned the importance of keeping my skin hydrated in the arid regions of the southwest I’ve called home and to take care to apply a good slathering of SPF to all visible skin before going outside. However, my concern for my skin as I age stops there.

Some may argue that at 27, I am too young to be writing on the topic of aging; I beg to differ. Cosmetic companies spend a great deal of money on advertisements targeting women in my age group – those women who have not yet begun to show the tell-tale signs of age but who soon will.  If you are wondering why I chose to address aging in relation to women verses men, it’s because American society has created a strong gender bias on the matter. Celebrities are a wonderful illustration of this. As men age, they are often regarded as more dignified, mature, and distinguished and can still be considered attractive, in fact some are regarded as more attractive the older they get. Aging actors still get lead roles: the sex scenes, the action (a few names to prove my point: George Clooney, Sean Connery, Paul Newman). Aging actresses go from leading seductive ladies to the the leading lady’s mothers, the executives, the politicians – ie. the roles without sex appeal; or they simply fade away, appearing in fewer and fewer films (a few more names: Meryl Streep, Susan Surrandon, Glen Close). But it is not just Hollywood that sends this message; a quick look at the marketing demographics for companies selling anti-aging products reveals that it is women, not men, who they expect as customers. And that brings me back to why I – at 27 – have a very valid reason for writing on the topic of aging.