According to my dictionary, it is to be obsolete, old-fashioned or outdated. None of this applies to me and yet it does. Because this particular culture says so. This culture has an implicit statement to make about age and purpose. There are manifest and subtle latent cut-offs for people. In fact we have perfected retirement in its various manifestations. Careers are made for those creating pensions and benefits; retirement homes are an extraordinary business. You can fill in the rest. At a certain age you automatically become old or of “retirement age.” The whole construct of retirement is a product of a capitalistic system. We do not value the wise, the accrued smarts of those older than ourselves. Americans generally dwell in the new, the temporary, riding the crest of the wave; the association comes to mind of a surfer connecting to his Ipad while on his board. We adore the temporary, the facile, the evanescent. All this is the seemingly banal complaint or observation by the old of the young.
What do the superannuated do or feel when they realize they have reached the age of superfluousness. Many engage retirement all that more, digging deeper into their golf game or doing line dancing (argh!) at the local gym, or taking courses as hamburger helper for their minds as they speed toward death and dying. No superannuated person considers occupying Aetna’s offices, especially the benefits office. Admittedly, to face what this culture mandates in a thousand subtle ways, like licking the bronze shoe of a sculpture in Rome, the infinite licking producing a centuries old patina, is to realize that resistance is futile — the Borg have won. Awareness, personal self-awareness, is a rare commodity in all populations throughout the world. To be awake is not a good thing for one who is “over the hill.” It is not even a good thing for one who is young. Imagine America as an immense human head with a Trump combover, silly, vain, unreal, narcissistic and completely out of touch with some commonly held verities throughout human history, oh, such as integrity.
The only movie that I can recall over all these decades that sent out a disturbing message about the conditioned and unconditioned was “The Matrix.” I read it for what it was. A metaphor for the aware and unaware, one world induced a living coma in life, while the other fought off the narcolepsy, the hypnotic trance the so-called “real” world was in. I argue that all the nonsense sent to us by satellites and cable are pollution, for they create and have created a kind of blade runner world. I wonder, at moments, if there are any young adults who see through all this dangerous cant; and if they do, are they suicidal? If you have not learned who you are by your young adulthood, this world will indoctrinate you so well that you can watch a child being raped and not intervene. Oh, no, I don’t mean call the cops — that comes later. I mean actually intervene. In this case 911 is the second choice. May McQueary never find solace in his “God.”
A few months ago, coming home one night my wife and I watched a neighbor who we only had a few interactions with, a mother, in this case, approach her son who was seated on the lawn with his buddies. Then, she slapped him heartily about the head for some misdeed only known to her. Standing next to her was another neighbor who was “involved” with his cellphone and acted as if he had heard nothing, which he definitely did, because I shouted to the mother to stop what she was doing. I tore into her verbally. At first she thought I was kidding her. I told her if she continued I would call child protective services. With that she took her child and left. So I had an aberrant mother and an uninvolved cop who heard nothing. Yes, a cop! Yes, he denied he heard anything although the event occurred on his lawn no more than four steps away from him. When the next cattle car chugs across the landscape to Auschwitz, he will hear nothing as well.
I feel very superannuated in this world, for my values are considered outre or retro. I feel they have been tested by my decades of living. I have lived from hearing Superman on radio to having a woman sell me a pound of coffee at a farmer’s market the other day and use her smartphone to connect to my bank, after I used the tip of my finger to sign my name on the glass screen as well as forward a receipt to my computer. I am the same man, the same continuing person all these decades. You can mix me up, scramble me like three eggs on a griddle, and I will still be me. You would think this might be appreciated. No. It is not. The scary thing is that we are all so enmeshed in anomie that the only validation we have is the validation we may give to ourselves (many are unaware of that personal attribute)– and that is a centuries old verity, believe me.
Superannuated as I am, I dwell in the somewhat smug and self-satisfied notion that I own something you don’t have and it is worth millions. However, i see that you have a somewhat smug and self-satisfied notion that my time is over and you are declared the winner. I had a good run. And as Harlan Ellison once ended one of his short stories, “Fuck you!”
One response to “Superannuated, My Ass”