Yesterday on Netflix I stumbled upon a 2022 Spanish teen drama entitled “Merlí: Sapere Aude“. The original use of the phrase Sapere aude appears in the First Book of Letters (20 BC) by the Roman poet Horace: “Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet; sapere aude, incipe” He who has begun is half done; dare to know; begin! The phrase is the moral to a story in which a fool waits for a stream to cease flowing before attempting to cross it.
The nostalgic parallel to old age – as is so frequently advanced – is not, I have concluded, merely wisdom. By immense contrast the token labels attaching to physical decomposition and arthritis are often far less flattering though – as I am equally bound to admit – no less informative. In my defence of this discrediting analysis there is a natural but prejudicial yearning of the mind and spirit to invoke not diminution rather increase. The craving – when applied to aging – is nonetheless not only contradictory but also unfavourable because inadvertently it constitutes an oversight of both underlying fact and influence.
My dear Patricia,
Thank-you for your email, always welcome.
Normally – at this juncture – I would not engage in prolongation of our internet communication for fear of reducing it to a “Called you last!” jousting. By all appearance, each of us has already exchanged all that needs to be said in the circs. My reluctance is specially so in light of what I am about to say. And I warn you now this is stuff about you I have silently harboured for years so I have had frequent opportunity upon which to ruminate, refine and reconsider its substance and truth before pronouncing my verdict. However I can no longer sustain my tranquility or withhold my secrecy.
It’s ten o’clock in the morning. I was about to munch my breakfast eggs (skilfully cooked with avocado oil and butter then finished with Maldon salt) when the telephone rang. It was a call from the receptionist of our family dentist. She enquired whether, in view of the snow storm – and the fact that several others had already cancelled their appointments, we intended to continue with our scheduled appointment later today. Unhesitatingly I replied that we were were.
There is an understandable curiosity about one’s past. In spite of the obvious – namely, that we were there – the recollection is clouded by forgetfulness, time and occasionally a particle of deceit. Indeed it is not uncommon to read about – or hear someone else relate – a past incident and be surprised by the details, as though the account were not only forgotten but also not even now imaginable. Sometimes there is a complete wonder at having experienced the account at all. On occasion we’re lucky enough to discover we behaved as formidably as we reportedly did; or, that we undertook the event at all.
Today, at the height of my retirement and in as respectable an appearance as that to which I am now capable to attach, I presented myself to a country lawyer in our small town to sign an affidavit regarding a will I had drawn over a decade ago. It is a longstanding distinction to be a country lawyer – a distinction which, sometimes jokingly, others times mockingly, brooks either complimentary status or pejorative contempt. Predominantly however it may be displaced as a term of endearment. For my part it is an epithet to which I bond with considerable zeal and pride and no false modesty. I have heard it said of one country lawyer no longer whinnying among us that, “He practiced law with the contempt it deserves!” This from a former Justice of the provincial court in our county seat. The labelling competition is normally among the lawyers themselves.
Encapsulated in its most diverse definition the word abbreviation (whether elision, acronym, abridgement, pruning or telescoping) speaks to reduction. Not uncommonly this characterization flourishes upon approaching old age, a frequent example of which is downsizing. But old age – so I have unwittingly discovered – has further ground for cutback. I speak of food.
Feeling very alone today. Not lonely, not forsaken, rather solitary. Perhaps because it’s a serene Sunday, a lightly snowing day, approaching mid-January after the social upheaval. The river is bland and empty. The fields are asleep beneath a duvet of white. The horizon disappears into the rim of misty trees. There is a pervasive quiet, a subdued atmosphere, predominantly white and grey with softened tinges of brindle.
Drifting about the countryside this Saturday afternoon, with temperatures above freezing, the roads dry and shards of light blue in the white sky on the horizon, the car running to ideal standard, it was all I could do to sustain myself from unending proclamation of euphoria. Granted a particle of this gleeful elation was my sudden release from the stomach aches I’ve endured for the past three days (perhaps those pink pills really work); but the winning effect of it all was a palliative beyond description.
As the clamour of Christmas finally subsides and we approach the middle of January, we mechanically enter the Winter Wilderness, that uninhabited wasteland of nothingness. The surreal nature of the void is for me compounded by the effects of over-the-counter cough syrup which I have no doubt contains enough “medicine” to seriously distort one’s mental equilibrium, contributing in no small part to midnight dreams of the most bizarre nature.