There ought to be a law somewhere about looking at oneself in the mirror after the age of 50.
Here in my seclusion, I have had the opportunity to gaze at my eyebrows, tweezers in hand, and try to undo the damage. Most of the hairs on my left side are white. I find this appalling because the brow on the other side of my face isn't white. Well, not completely.
So, as I am gazing with contempt for those errant brows, I realize that they aren't the problem.
Underneath my eyes, not where bags are, but on my cheekbones, I'm in trouble.
Whoa! Where did those weird puffy parts come from?
They disturb me to no end.
I slather on moisturizer every single day and yet, they persist.
Okay. I have to admit that I am old now.
I held on to being not old for a long time. People in bars or those I met for the first time often were amazed that I was as old as I said I was.
I have even had to produce my driver's license to prove my age...although not recently. But I don't get out that much, and certainly not to bars.
Anyway, I look old.
I feel old.
I am old.
Word of caution to all those lovely young chickies out there: You'd better enjoy your bodies and faces now because, in all too few years, you will be subject to what I face now.
No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you're going to get old.
And wrinkled.
And spotted.
And warty,
God Forbid!
So please enjoy your youthful appearance now, while you have it.
I could burst into song right about here, but I won't.
Getting old sucks, but it sure beats the alternative.
Good luck.
Perhaps you have wondered about the picture on this blog. The Victorian inn with the pink background. It was created by my artist in residence, Karyn, to hint at the story I was working on...The Mermaid Arms.
That may have been as much as 8 years ago.
I wrote much of it, all including the end, which is spectacular even if I say so myself.
But, I did a bad thing.
I wrote out of sequence.
I had several people wanting me to write, so I wrote. Chapters, scenes, anything that moved me.
All out of order but the first six chapters.
Yes, I am grievously ashamed of myself for doing this because when I tried to put it all together, I couldn't.
I made a timeline.
I read and reread. I figured out most of it, even the last eight chapters that were as well formed as the beginning six. So, what remained was the middle.
Oh, it did not lack for happenings and excitement, but it was rather jumbled.
So, one week while in North Carolina on vacation, I put it all together. Every chapter and scene and it made sense, with the exception of one chapter.
It needed to be included as it showed tremendous character development. But it hung out there like an extra foot or entire limb. Freakishly just there.
Alone and abandoned.
So I quit working on the World War II story.
Herb stated that I would never finish it. Such a sweetheart, but deep down inside, I guess he may have been right.
Until yesterday when in a flash of mental lightning, I figured out how to make it work.
I have to change the POV and it will slide right in where it belongs.
And, in case I would forget it, I actually wrote down a note and the first sentence so I would remember.
Now...all that remains is for me to salvage the chapter's meaning and rewrite just a bit in the POV of the protagonist.
To quote Peter Pan--Oh, the cleverness of ME!!!
There is a scene in the Man from Snowy River where the heroine is lost in the outback of Australia, somehow having run away from her father's tyranny. She is stuck on a cliff and, naturally, the hero finds her in a terrible rain storm and rescues her.
He has had the hots for her all along, but she is a rich girl and he is a lowly nothing who works for her father on the ranch, or station I believe it is called.
She has had an epiphany whilst up on the cliff in the rain.
She sees what's going on clearly, possibly as one is supposed to do when one faces imminent death.
She says to him, as he has rescued her, "I see it all clearly now."
He doesn't believe her, perhaps because it is truly what is in his humble heart, or because the story doesn't quite end there.
I don't exactly remember what more is said, but I do remember her saying the bit about seeing things clearly now. It's been years since I last saw the movie.
But that one line has stuck in my head.
I'm 71 years old. I like to watch Godzilla movies, I like to watch UFO and alien stuff on television. I love my family. I have many wonderful and dear friends. I love my country.
What I see happening here is appalling. I see horror. I see pain. I see death and disease and people working their hands off to fight something so unbelievable...something more horrific than war...or a movie monster.
And I see rampant stupidity with people who fail to see what I see.
I'm not the one on the cliff.
They are, and the cliff is getting really crowded.
