what I am like in real life
by uzwi
twisty. a bit stiff in the joints. not a fiction. always walking away from something, including myself. always down the road in that sense or, metaphorically, in the motorcycling sense, ie a spill of one sort or another. quite short. physical stamina long gone. very angry even now but able to sleep most nights, which is new. don’t listen to music much any more. hate all the same things I hate here, also some others; love all the same things I love here, also some others. would not be psychologically safe without the efforts of the people who love me. losing the constant war with cake. losing the constant war on chocolate. afraid of death. afraid of pain. afraid of loss. desperately admire most dogs but only as long as I don’t have to own one. after long experience admire only some cats. try to be decent. never danced much. decline in ability to focus obsessively seems to have led to increased success. don’t describe things in the world as often or as well as I used to. like machines. like big, energetic astronomical events, esp including hard x-rays. like to walk. like to jog. own a lot of specialised shoes. like silence. love a pork pie. feel frail, although that’s probably not the case yet but an imaginative casting-forward. often employ the rhetorical question “What am I like?”, meaning how can anyone be this fucked up/absent-minded/late. keep some parts of myself severely to myself, am thus able to maintain a deep fruitful disjunction between this real world & the real real world. always a fiction. sixty nine years old in a month. no heroes. will read for cash.
69 in 2 weeks! Feel much the same except for the success bit. Life is spiraling down, down down.
GSOH, would like to meet similar –
Behave.
76 in three weeks. I have my bad moments (nothing new though), but most of the time I’m busy, so I don’t have time to ruminate.
I loved reading this.
Seventy is the new eighty.
Or is it sixty. . .
Oh, is that a biscuit?
Thanks, Robin!
None of its real anyway…you know that.
The obvious next question: “what is MJH in real life like in undeath?”
What is real life?
[…] what I am like in real life | the m john harrison blog "keep some parts of myself severely to myself, am thus able to maintain a deep fruitful disjunction between this real world & the real real world." (and: of _course_ the "Robin" commenting on MJH's blog is Robin Sloan) (tags: mjohnharrison writing ) […]
in the process of being forced out of my building, but then finding that the deal will actually be kinda sweet—I prepare to move to Brooklyn with help from the thrower-outer person……having read all your peripheral details about your move and now, the slowly (actually seems a bit brisk to me) fading physicality—I wave to you from across the big water
Hi Mia, I wave back. Hope the move goes well. Mine has been, generally, lively & productive, with lots of new possible subject matter. Physicality: determined to keep going, whatever that now entails–mostly less energy/ambition etc; & also to meet age on a combination of its own terms & my own, as if it never happened to anyone else before. What could possibly go wrong? π
Is “quite short” the same as “not as tall as people seem to think”?