Julian Summerhayes

“Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

"Without culturally endorsed deep employment of this treasure of experience that could be elderhood, aging is just more of the same with less of the give-a-shit. It’s all swoon, the sordid lunge for enduring at any cost. It’s an extended-play version of middle age, plus infirmity. And it seems to me that this is what the aged among us have become." — Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (p. 6), North Atlantic Books

I feel like I've been up half the night. I'm going to need plenty of coffee, fresh air and, well, a bit of fortitude to get through the day unless that is I succumb to an afternoon nap — not on the job, of course.

This heading, sadly, was at least partly to blame; I couldn't get it out my bloody head.

Will I make old bones?
Won't I make old bones?
Who really cares if I make old bones?
What actually is old bones?

But it's not really the point — at least of this post.

Instead, what does it mean to grow old? Is it simply a case of allowing things to take their natural course (it all goes South!) or something a little less obvious, a bit more nuanced?

My favourite podcast.