…And Living To Be 100+.
A stack of recent reads. You might like ‘em…
Bedtime reading is one of the things recommended by a wellness list of things to do to live to be 100. More about that and a link to it in the next paragraph; and more about the books (and links) in paragraphs four to nine.
I just read an article about becoming a centenarian; 100 things to do to live to be 100. I’m happy to report that I do a bunch of them. So does Freddie*. Like not riding a motorcycle (anymore). Like not smoking (anymore). Not BASE jumping (never did). Well, they aren’t mostly negative, most are about doing things, not NOT doing things, like...well here’s the link. On that subject, I read somewhere that once you get into your 80’s you’re good for awhile; you’ve evaded most of the stuff that’ll kakk you right away, so it might be good to read the list and go for a hundred or more, whatever your age.
Can’t read it? Neither can I…have an Atomic Fireball.
One of the things TO do is to keep a journal. I do. Here’s a picture of it and an Atomic Fireball, which didn’t make the list; I use Atomic Fireballs sporadically. They’re hot, cinnamony, and sort of like the old Jawbreakers, hard as a rock, so you have to wait until they dematerialize. You don’t want to chew on them. Another thing I do that’s good is walk. Over 10,000 steps a day, about five miles, usually more, but always at least 10k. (An Atomic Fireball lasts about 1200 steps.) And I keep a record of it in the journal. I can hardly read my writing (or printing) so it's not for posterity. If I can’t read it nobody else can either. Who would want to. But I do it and it’s a good thing, apparently.
The book stack. I’ve been reading (and writing) a lot of nonfiction. Poetry, too. Starting at the top, Zadie Smith’s Intimations, essays about the early days of the New York-emptying pandemic and related thoughts. I’ll be reading more of her; this is my first. Great writer. Garrison Keillor’s compilation of Good Poems, American Places is a masterful collection and I wrung it dry, reading the bios at the end, each poem more than once. It’s about 500 pages. I read this slowly, about two poems a day. Thank you, GK, for putting this together. Country Dark by Chris Offut was one of two fiction books I’ve read lately and it was well-named, set in rural Kentucky in the years following the Korean War. Cormac McCarthy meets Raymond Carver. What a writer.
Just Before Dark, by Jim Harrison, one of my favorite writers, was a revealing book of essays about true Zen-masters, poetry, coming of several ages, various appetites and unimaginable feasts to satisfy them. Mile Marker Zero, The Moveable Feast Of Key West by William McKeen, is, as Tom Wolfe puts it: “A tall but telescopic-sight-true tale of Hunter Thompson, Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and a large cavorting cast running around with sand in their shoes at ‘ground zero’ for lust and greed and most of the other deadly sins’: Key West.” Entertaining.
Walker Percy’s The Message in the Bottle, was, for me, a slooowww read, as his gargantuan intellect and deep philosophical meanderings were not at all like his fiction which I enjoyed immensely, all of it. I will have to read it again to see if I “get it.” Maybe you will. I did “get” the Helen Keller treatise and found it view-changing. No pun.
Steve Erickson’s fiction novel Shadowbahn is vintage Erickson slipstream—if you read Rubicon Beach, Zeroville or Arc d’X you know the context. I first read his Days Between Stations and I was hooked. Beautiful.
I wanted to read some of Jo Ann Beard’s nonfiction and chose The Boys of My Youth. I will read more of Beard. Her voice is, at once, comic, sad, wise and hugely entertaining.
And, at stack’s bottom, National Bestseller, Up In The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell, an oft-times New Yorker contributor whose book makes the case for journalism-as-literature. A friend gave me this book years ago and it has remained in one dusty, towering stack or another for all that time until it finally caught my eye, and I’m glad it did. So that’s the stack. Good reading.
*Now for Freddie’s asterisk. Just wanted to say, she is beautiful. And will be at 100 plus. Nobody’s surprised at my age. But Freddie, she is flat gorgeous. I look at her when she’s cooking something or getting ready to head out the door, and think, man, what a chick. Sorry feministas, but there it is. That old guy thing. Hey, stay well. (I just got back from Louisburg and a J&J booster shot—I’d like to see 100+)