As one (too much to dare for many) of you already knows, I fall into the category of the aged old. I'm still learning how to cope with a body that is no longer as co-operative as it was, set in a mind that still seems fairly sharp around the edges. I'm learning to pace myself to make do with less of the phenomenal energy I used to have, to accept gratefully and gracefully the delights of an afternoon nap, and other times. When people offer me a seat on the subway train, I smile and sit down murmuring how nice it is to be old. I still wash and try to make myself presentable each day but I don't fuss about make-up, not that I ever did much fussing, relying arrogantly on excellent skin that came from my Icelandic genes. I have been invisible for years now and it's an advantage, most of the time, except when someone walks into me or steps across my path or rushes into the subway train before allowing me to come out. Then I want to shout "Am I invisible?" but I don't because I am. People of a certain age simply do not see me. I know that. I just have to get used to it.

There's an inner monologue by the old woman in Doris Lessing's novel (s, now published as one book), The Diaries of Jane Somers (the first one), with her sad acknowledgment of dwindling energy coupled with the overwhelming daily necessities that she can't cope with. So she leaves them, and each day slips into a greater morass. I can totally relate to that. I look around me now and can see lots of things I should attend to, little chores, repairs, replacements and so on that I no longer have the time, energy (or money) to take care of. It's okay. It's not as bad as some because I've moved so many times and lost so much with each move that there's less to take care of or worry about. (You know the old saying, "three moves is as good as a fire".) You hear of people who have lived in the same house for 30-40-50 years and the time it takes to shovel out the detritus of their lives when/if they finally leave, usually not by choice.

I've been dealing with all this, not the mess and accumulation, but the thought of it, in my new book about aging. I've written the first draft, as some of you (one?) know, and now I'm filling in the blanks. This is one of the problems, but it has less to do with failing strength than it has to do with disappearing support. The chief problem of the elderly is loneliness. I'll get to that. (Heck, I'm already there.)

All it takes is time.

I've told you before that I'm not to be trusted with books, especially one that wraps itself around my hippocampus and won't let me go. I'm trying very hard to be disciplined with this one because it's very long and I have things to do. Last night I actually set the timer on me so that I would quit and go to bed at a decent hour. You think that's discipline; it's not, it's self-protection. I managed to swim this morning after a perfectly timed sleep, thanks to my timer. But I made the mistake of reading at breakfast and now it's time to go about the day, and no blog.

I'll tell you, the book is so good. I will never in a million years write as well as this author. And she knows so much. I have always known myself to be short of a working knowledge of say, a car engine, or of astronomy, or plants. I think of the American humorist, Robert Benchley (1889-1945), who said he knew two things in nature: a robin and a rose. That's me, abysmally ignorant. I know a bit about cooking, something about Grimm's Language Laws, and I can recite the first book of Madeline ("In an old house in Paris/All covered with vines...."), but not much else. This person whose book, one of the best hundred and also one of the best ten published last year in the U.S., this person is astonishing. I recommend Donna Tartt's THE GOLDFINCH. It's up for the Bailey's (formerly the Orange) Prize for Women's Literature, winner to be announced in April. I'll have time to re-read it before then.