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Those cutie pies
hiding in the back of our heads will not date us anymore?
No shit…
are they insane?
Of course! Can’t
you see, old fart, beauty follows beauty?
In my mind I don’t see that. I am the cute
one.
My mom used to tell me … hmmm…sometimes.
What are the initial
symptoms of aging?
First signs come
right after we are born.
We cry a lot and
start to develop wrinkles.
We see mom and
dad also developing wrinkles as we cry loud enough to make them go crazy.
Then we grow up
and bring that street bitch into mom’s living room and tell her she’s the girl of our dreams.
We feel the need
for bigger doses of ice cream.
Our toys get bigger
and heavier. We trade our 18-foot boat for a 38’ cabin cruiser no matter the $300.00+ fuel dollars every time we visit
the marina’s gas station, and our older Yamaha Enduro must be urgently changed for the latest $40,000.00 Harley Davidson
beast. We take more duties than we can handle and feel stress. Stress is also a sign that we feel powerless over a situation.
Anxiety is just the result of trying to control the future… Fear of death is not realizing we were born already. The
fact that we try to control doesn’t mean we can do it. Our biological calendar starts to click towards its end. There
is no way back unless we take a trip in a time machine that has not been invented yet. The universe can only move in one direction
at the same time. Only by bouncing off a distant object can anything start to return back to home again.
Otherwise, Newton
is wrong to his bones.
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Maybe one day we
can train our subconscious to “send” commands to our body to produce the chemical mix of our bio programs in reverse
order and somewhat accomplish some healings and retro-shit in our bodies.
The simpatico and
para-simpatico systems regulate all our body functions such as producing insulin, how much salt is needed in our blood and
how many times the heart has to beat per minute of sex or inaction and other shit needed to enjoy life to the limits.
We define whom
we are depending on, what we hear about us, maybe because it is easier to believe other people, no matter if they are having
fun at screwing up our fragile minds or projecting their innermost expectations of themselves. Especially the ones they cannot
accomplish themselves but prefer to see us trying like fools and guinea pigs of their own monstrosities.
Professional young
people do not like to socialize with repugnant, ignorant, homeless, or elders and they think those socially emarginated belong
to the same political party and like to dirty the urinals they use for no reason at all. Becoming a social leftover then,
should be a good early indicator of incipient old age.
Crack heads do
socialize with the aging community and it is convenient for those demons because they get freebies.
Have you ever cached
yourself requesting the Bunny Hop or the Anniversary Waltz at the local Rap & Crack Club?
Do you listen to
Rap, dude?
All about life
is a drama. The two masks of the theater resemble the basic reality of life’s events and happenings.
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where’s the other one?
Those two theater masks of happiness or sadness express all about music, theater, and movies.
The masks represent
victory or tragedy and we must either follow reality or enter insanity.
And dude, its bad
enough to be old… add poverty to the mix to get a complete disaster for the rest of your days.
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As any good CEO of
any worldwide enterprise can, I could still handle 20,578 employees and more, all over the world (if I had such a job), but
if they all decide to make a meeting one day for me to hear their problems and solve each one of their personal and corporate
miseries during the course of that meeting I would have to put on a steel face, pretend to be the corporate guru they all
(and me) want to see, delegate in a special-on-the-spot-custom-made committee of 20,578 delegates (most probably themselves)
each to shuffle their written problems within themselves, write an answer for each problem card they received, and exchange
the answers with a big celebration while I pretend to go to the bathroom and escape to go fishing, golfing or dating that
new secretary.
I other words, give
them the problem back? Yup, we see this happening in corporate America almost everyday.
I am starting to feel powerless and I
don’t like that feeling at all. I want to be like King Kong again. Am I getting old?
That is why I wrote this book, to share
with you my experiences and strengths (if any) in the process of aging gracefully. Govern yourself accordingly. Amen.
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I have come “of age” and want to learn how to deal
with those inevitable times where I must realize
I am getting older…
…Without breaking today, anything expensive…
Next Chapter
is only for those brave at heart.
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Welcome to
those invariably “unexpected” times for aging gracefully. Let’s take a trip to a place everyone likes
to avoid but end up residing there forever. Let’s visit the land and brains of the gracefully aged.
Be brave now (its just a reality movie) and follow me….
Only a few years ago I was still in the heights of my growing up processes
and dreams towards spiritual, physical and emotional success. Why would I think differently? I was raising a family, again,
for the third time, doing the best with what I had, and believing my future would be as secure and solid as a rock. What future
I had left was to be taken care by itself, by my family, or by my own strengths because I had a lot of strength by then, or
so I firmly believed. I had the world all figured out. My medical record straight since my birth had been a successful procession
of colds, scattered body aches and just a little bit of confusion at times. Just at times, of course.
This whole thing of getting old sucks! Why me? Why me?
Oh, my God!
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I know what I need, I need to see a doctor and I’ll be honest with him
about my aging problems and I will ask about what I should do to counter aging side effects the best I can while I can. I
know there must be a solution!
I am very confident there are many things I can do!
Right? Yes? No? Please tell me….
Knock Knock…
Who is it?
I want to see the doctor, can I?
Do you have an appointment?
No Mam, I don’t but would like to see him today.
Do you have an emergency?
(How can I tell her I have a mental emergency in front of a full room of waiting
patients?)
No Mam, I don’t have an emergency.
Write your name in there and sit down after you pay $100.00 if you don’t
have medical insurance.
Want to know what I have?
I’m not the doctor: please sit down.
Thank you, Mam…
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By this time I feel like shit but decide it is in my best interest to have
a responsible and qualified medical opinion of my stupid mental agony regarding my very recently noticed aging stages. After
all, I do this all the time for my computer clients regarding their machines.
Life is a mechanical bitch, I remember telling myself while scanning the place
for magazines or objects of the higher order. After thirty minutes in the waiting room I remember getting my soul out of the
place to burn time, smoke a Marlboro and think.
Mr. Julio, you are next…
Thank you… And the reason for my next aging approach started right then.
What can I do for you today? The doctor said.
Doctor, I have this bad feeling… my mind don’t talk to me no more.
I ask questions to myself and get no answers.
I remembered a preacher I used to visit in my younger days that used to press
30 minutes of dirt hitting and hell going at the very question of what to do next and I feared the doctor would utilize the
same sermons with me. I have to stop this shit of imagining things because I attract them so easily. That passionate family
doctor could not find a way to stop telling me all the things I had done wrong in life without me even telling him my name
first.
He also said that the resultant damages to my system and future were to be
present during any attempts to recover from the caustic effects of sin (Read: aging).
In other words: I was fucked up. Big time.
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Then what can I do? I heard myself asking.
Please tell me what’s wrong with my systems…
“You must stop all you are doing right now and start a new
life
accepting your virtues and limitations...”
(Gustavo Quiñones Portela 1909-1999)
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My doctor never said: you are getting old.
But then he said: I have been many years practicing medicine and now I feel
tired and I don’t want to practice no more. I started a garden in my house. It is a Hindu mixed vegetables garden and
I find great pleasure tending to it, watering it and watching it grow. What is your profession?
I am an Internet services provider, I also write and produce multimedia content
for the global audience. I also used to be a commercial aviation pilot; do you think that might help?
Well then, you must give up all things that bring confusion to your mind (is
he calling me crazy?) and dedicate yourself to lighter things. Your mind has too many things running at the same time. You
must let go of some of that load.
(I still want him to say I’m getting fucking old but he keeps resisting
saying the shitty words)
I kept pushing on like a good patient:
But… I can still do a lot of things. I only came here today because
I want to understand why my mind does not want to respond to my questions like before. Why is my mind so silent? Is that bad?
Then the doctor, paternally looked at me for a few seconds, and gravely
said:
As you speak, I also see myself in a pretty much similar situation. I
did not realized until now that my mind is also silent to my queries at times. You see, I have a lot of years practicing medicine,
and I can still install two or three more offices, I know how to make that, but I am feeling that I’m not getting satisfaction
in medicine like before. I ask my mind and I get no answers either.
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Oh boy, at that point I could not help but to burst out laughing hard.
Then said: You feel like this too? Do you really ask your mind and find no answers? I mean, complete silence? Like me? Hahahahahahaaaaa
!!! Cool!!
I didn’t know doctors could feel like this…
He then told me: Yes, I feel like that too. I have resorted to set up
this mixed vegetables garden in my house and go there to relax and meditate and to contemplate the beauty of a blooming garden.
I put water and see the vegetables grow and that makes me happy. Try to do that and come and see me in two weeks.
I told myself, if this doctor is also as fucked up as me, then there is
no reason for me to worry. Then no one can really hear their own brains and if they do then they are as sick as crazy motherfuckers.
Wow, how relaxed I came out of that office.
I even said thank you doctor, without me realizing his consternation at
my stupidity.
That doctor had tried to make me understand that I was simply getting
old while I was laughing at his lack of mental concentration through a distorted perception from my part of his polite guidance
and explanations.
Is that a reaction of senility or I am just a son of a bitch?
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A doctor telling me what I have and I perceive him as confessing he is
fucked up and not me.
I am fucked up!
Well half of my psychotic reaction at his office is his fault then for
not been honest in telling me direct and in plain language what he was trying to say about me getting old and fucked up.
But again, who the hell is going to tell a crazy looking patient direct
in his face: My friend, you are cracking up!
I guess safety comes first. Honesty can come in second priority even if
the patient is paying the bill.
After all, doctors don’t know if an aging patient is a real psycho
already and carries a loaded gun to satisfy his anger for not being able to buy a time machine or a fucking plastic surgery
to fix a Dracula looking face.
Whatever the intentions of that doctor, I left the office believing he
was as fucked up as me, singing a stupid song inside of what was left of my mind and very happy to know that others too, were
operating like me, at a fucked up brain level.
So I must be Ok, I told myself.
Maybe even NASA astronauts all think “the way we all do”,
with silent brains and no quick answers coming out of their coconuts like the doctor’s and mine and that makes me feel
very normal and right on top of the world. Houston, we don’t have a single problem…. We are all normal in here…
I mean everything looks normal in here… is it? Or not? Please tell me!
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Then I left the place and drove back to my neighborhood still singing
and congratulating myself for not been the crazy old fart like I believed I was at first.
Boy, I was so happy that day!
I even planned to stop by a neighbor’s house to gossip about the
poor doctor with silent brains and his Hindu garden of mixed vegetables, wanting to quit his medicine practice and retire
for good.
See how sick an aging man can get?
In my mind, the doctor was as sick as a fart.
In the doctor’s mind there was probably guilt for not telling me
what I had in plain language for fear of me not been able to handle the truth. Or fear of a concealed weapon maybe hidden
by an aging demented patient.
Was he comparing me to the kind of aging guys you find working at the
Post Office and shooting their bosses and assistants?
That doesn’t make him an honest doctor but what the hell. Who is honest anyway?
In all cases, we were both sick as a vomit to each other although I still
praise my honesty and direct questioning.
This is the kind of situations aging baby boomers can expect from regular
services providers.
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I write all this in hopes that doctors one day stop all diplomatic shit
and go straight at the heart of patients with serious questions about their health and future, if there is any for those aging
gracefully.
Even the fear of suicide in a panic stricken patient will never outweigh
the urgent need of an aging person to learn about their body functioning and what alternatives if any they (read: we) have
to minimize the emotional impact of coming to terms with aging, senility, dementia, and final disposition of our own body.
By politely lying to a patient believing things will be swallowed easier,
doctors don’t help much but still charge for their time.
This is fraud at the highest diplomatic order and doctors should be punished
for that.
Education of the medical professionals is an alternative for punishment.
But no matter what reasons a doctor might create in their brains in a
quick thinking fast talking scheme, there is not a drop of decency or honesty in deceiving an aging person.
The truth shall prevail. Always. Amen.
Ok, here it cometh the happily aging patient looking for his neighbor’s
house to gossip and burn time a bit.
From his neighbors carport he beepeth the horn so loud that maketh the
dogs to bark aloud in the whole neighborhood.
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Wait… what do I see? My neighbor Roger is tending sort of a garden
in the backyard. What is this National Garden Conference or an Internet offer I still don’t know about?
Beep Beeep …. Hey Roger… come out here. I’ve got to
tell you something about this doctor who don’t get answers from his brains right at asking time. What are we patients
going to do with such a dangerous heifer?
Here it cometh Roger, slow but sure. I can see him lying down a rake and
a shovel and a pair of gloves…
I feel a little bit of guilt in the back of my head.
I can see his big and honest eyes coming my way.
What am I doing, I asked myself?
“Too late!” my mind answered on one of those rare occasions…
You see, my mind responds, but only when it wants.
Like it’s got some life of itself.
My mind likes to answer only when to fuck me up later.
Almost always at the wrong time.
Like playing games with me.
I’ll give you more on that in a while.
I’ve got to watch Roger now….
He’s arrived to my car’s door already.
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