Aging

Today I feel a sense of my own aging. I’m to have a colonoscopy this afternoon, which is a weirdly intimate thing to admit even though it’s pretty normal. A special time in life. Like a mid-life bar mitzvah. I wonder if there is a Hebrew prayer for colonoscopies. Blessed are you oh lord our god, king of the universe and keeper of the cancer-free colon.

We like to think our relationship to our bodies gets more connected with age but that isn’t quite right. It’s just that our body is the place we see the difference in our age. The look of age is more decisive and scarier than the way you feel or sense you have changed. Memory plays less of a role.

Last night I watched another film by Lam Ngai Kai. This time The Peacock King: a pretty insane fantasy about an evil witch and a hell virgin trying to unlock the gates of hell while two long lost brothers fight to save the day. After watching Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (I love that nonsense title) earlier in the week I just had to get to that director one more time. I haven’t gotten around to writing a review on Letterboxd yet. I’m getting behind on those again. When I’m feeling stress I have a hard time reviewing movies and I also have a hard time logging them without reviewing them. At the moment I’m 11 films in the hole.

As for my reading life, I’m hoping to finish The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes this afternoon. I like his use of first person to create a mystery over time. I also like the time scale of the piece. Very clever technique.

That is all for today’s post. If it feels scattered and preoccupied then I have put myself on the page.