
Notes Nearing Ninety: Learning to Write Less - quickfox
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/08/notes-nearing-ninety-learning-to-write-less/
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somberi
I read this in the Subway (NYC) the other day:

" I remember my mother toward the end,

folding the tablecloth after dinner

so carefully,

as if it were the flag

of a country that no longer existed,

but once had ruled the world. "

\- Jim Moore

Edit - Typo.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
Such a moving, poignant poem. Thanks for sharing.

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jpmoyn
This was short, honest, and really refreshing. I'll have to read more of him.

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teemo91
[This]([https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/double-
solitu...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/double-solitude))
piece for The New Yorker is one of my favorites from him.

~~~
camillomiller
Wow. I’m in tears. Haven’t read anything so beautiful in a long time

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JustMatthew
> These black leaves are the words I write.

That sentence and the whole paragraph it punctuated are so profoundly
beautiful. I want to write more, but brevity in this case, says more than I
ever could...

------
epberry
Beautiful and profound. Not all decades in life are created equal. Don't waste
a moment!

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kaiwen1
If the mind and body remain strong, I wonder if the atrophy of ambition is
just due to a waning sense of purpose? At 96 my grandfather was still driving
his van solo every summer from Michigan to the central highlands of Mexico to
help my father on his farm. He stopped at 97 after getting a viral infection
that sent him back to Michigan to recover. My father and his family went up to
take care of him, but he slowly decline and then died just one week shy of
100.

~~~
kwhitefoot
I'm now 62 and I can already feel my sense of purpose waning. I realize now
that I'm not going to change the world. My wife died last year and now I can
see that whatever I achieve now it will all be forgotten in a few short
decades. Sometimes I think "why bother doing anything?". Mostly I keep busy
with things that I had no time to do until I retired at the beginning of this
year. But, it has to be said that some of these things are just finishing
projects that have long been on hold and that I want to finish just for the
satisfaction of having completed them.

Sorry, rambling. Intimations of mortality have that effect on me sometimes.

~~~
acutesoftware
Sorry for your loss, and hope you have friends / family for support.

But, in terms of "why bother doing anything" \- well, that is a big bag of
worms, which really none of us should entertain as a thought. In reality, in
100 years just about every single one of all of our best projects / art /
websites will be long gone.

And that is ok - we cant have art galleries with 10^12 paintings to view, but
I think the point of life is for us as individuals to do what we love, teach
and help others and just enjoy it.

So finish the projects _you_ want to do, for the satisfaction of doing it. And
if you want, start a twitter account / blog and talk about it there. Chances
are someone will get something from it.

That's what the internet is all about - lots of hidden gems and views into
what other people do with their lives.

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emmanueloga_
Ha, I finished reading this and thought, "reminds me of this poem I heard on
This America Life". Turns out the poem in TAL is _also_ from Donald Hall [1].
I'll have to read Essays after 80 now.

1: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/651/if-you-build-it-will-
th...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/651/if-you-build-it-will-they-
come/act-three-7)

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aceshades
What does "the inevitable loss of ambitions fulfillment" mean?

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JoshMandel
I can hear "loss of ambition's fulfillment," in two ways, which gives it power
in tight, poetic prose:

1\. It is no longer fulfilling to be ambitious (i.e., a quiet home-centric,
narrowing life can be fulfillment enough)

2\. Ambitions are no longer fulfilled (i.e., there's not enough energy or time
in the day to meet ambitious goals)

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virtualwhys
"When I was eighty, still doing frequent poetry readings, audiences stood and
clapped when I concluded, and kept on clapping until I shushed them. Of course
I stayed to sign book after book and returned to my hotel understanding that
they applauded so much because they would never see me again."

Brings to mind Mary Oliver[0]

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to
do with your one wild and precious life?"

[0]
[http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html](http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html)

~~~
diN0bot
The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

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pjmorris
"An athlete goes professional at twenty. At thirty, he is slower but more
canny. At forty, he leaves behind the identity that he was born to and that
sustained him. He diminishes into fifty, sixty, seventy. Anyone ambitious who
lives to be old or even _old_ endures the inevitable loss of ambition’s
fulfillment."

~~~
themodelplumber
I'm not sure I struggle with the loss of ambition's fulfillment. Maybe that
will come after where I'm at now. But the ambitions of my teens, 20s, and 30s
seem pretty dumb, in retrospect.

I definitely struggle with the fact that it takes time to do things, and time
is shorter than it used to be, and so I should probably prioritize and focus.
But I know that kind of psychological railroading is not all-around good for
me, personally. I used to be so focused that it sucked the fun out. So I
continue starting all kinds of branches that will still look new when I'm
dead. I have zero problems with the energy I get from these little departures
and enjoy watching the new branches form.

~~~
selestify
Why were your earlier ambitions dumb?

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taeric
Not the OP, but I definitely have found that many of the things I spent money
on, therefore my earlier ambitions, are not things that have any value to me
today. Can't say that they were "dumb" per se, but I definitely haven't found
that they lasted in their appeal. It has been amusing to see my kids destroy
some things that used to have value to me.

Some examples: Collections of any kind. Dominance in any game. Completeness of
any endeavor.

I'm finding I enjoy getting as good as I can at some things. But I ultimately
don't care how good I am. Easy example is biking. I'm having a ton of fun
getting as fast as I can going up a hill going home. Even though Strava is
amusingly letting me know that there were over 500 folks that are much faster
than I am on the same hill. (To its credit, they put much more emphases on
Personal Records than they do on how you are doing against others.)

Same for some series. I ultimately don't care that I haven't read every last
book of some series. More, if I really want to know how the latest Marvel
movie has turned out, wikipedia is much faster and just as fulfilling for me.

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forapurpose
> that many of the things I spent money on

As I've aged, my perspective has become 'many of the things I spent _time_
on'. I can make more money.

As far as how to spend that time, I try to spend a lot on a few exceptionally
valuable things. Donald Knuth expresses it well when talking about email:
_Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of
things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do
takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration._ [0] (I'm not
Knuth so I can't say it's my role, but it's my goal.)

For my personal life, I've decided that nothing is more valuable than loving
relationships (platonic or romantic), so that is where I try to spend my time.

[0] [https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html](https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html)

~~~
taeric
Amusingly, I've found trying to digest many of Knuth's writing has been very
enjoyable for me as I've gotten older at computer science. I get an odd sense
that the industry doesn't respect his particular style and contribution as
much today as it used to. Which is a shame. He is much more empirical than he
is often presented. More, he is willing to discuss his mistakes and false
starts. Something I don't recall having seen in many other works. (Mayhap I'm
just having confirmation bias.)

I almost posted something about having nothing being worth more than my
relationships. I certainly feel that, to a large extent. However, I also have
trouble separating my work from my life. To the extent that I'm not even sure
I want to.

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barrkel
You are what you do. You spend so much time in life working, and your work is
your main function in your integration with the rest of society (and all the
relationships that entails).

And I think there's a certain humility to be found in that, in identifying
yourself with your work, and a job well done, as opposed to your work being
about you, a reflection of your ego. (Those two ideas might sound like they're
the same thing, but I don't think they are.)

Identity is often contextual. When you're with friends, you're one person,
when you're at work, you're another, and yet a third with relatives. You can
hear it when people's accents change when talking on the phone, their bearing
changes according to their interlocutors. If who you are is the sum of the
contexts your exist in, full retirement is a kind of death.

~~~
taeric
I've gone a bit further than that. You simply are. What you do is what you are
choosing to do. In some ways, it is easy to see how you can be "defined" by
what you do. But that is easily a distraction in many cases. Consider, few of
us consider ourselves defined by how much we sleep.

In large, we are defined by what we define ourselves by. Sure, there are
extreme cases where the world defines someone or something. But by and large,
those are the exceptions.

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barrkel
Sleeping people are little more than dead, but we don't sleep all the time.

I don't think we get to define ourselves. I think we are mostly the sum of our
responses to stimuli.

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taeric
I don't think we disagree that much. I'm more saying that there is no external
definition of what we are. Most people are unknown to history. You can get
bummed out about that, and it is intimidating.

However, it also means you are not necessarily held to any external
definition.

I think this view has serious limits. In large, being in complete control of
yourself is a luxury most people don't have. To that end, the views that folks
can somewhat legitimately hold of themselves are greatly limited by their
circumstances.

To play with both of our views together, the interpretations that you can
honestly hold are going to be the responses of the stimuli you are subjected
to.

Which is my way of saying to try not to get hung up if you are disappointed
with any of the current state. It is, in many ways, fleeting. Keep what you
can of what you like. Similarly, though, the fleeting nature of things is also
irrelevant. If you liked something, continue to have liked that thing. No
reason to change, unless you want to.

This sounds slightly contradictory to my earlier point. However, the things I
collected now hold no value. That I collected them, though, I can fondly
remember. If that makes sense.

