Recapturing Youth
7.8.06
Yesterdays "This American Life" featured a story about a young man who was wrongly accused of a murder and spent 21 years of his life in jail, beginning when he was 18. I didn't get to hear the whole story but it made me wonder what it's like to lose so much time and what time allows us to do and be in life. I thought of the abrupt life change he must have gone through, from hanging out with his buds on the streets to being incarcerated, life in a cell, with no power to direct his life quest. Of course, this is not knowing what he did in jail, how he spent his time, because I've known of many who have used that time to the best they could, while others don't. But assuming he was not able to pursue his species being, that his rightful ascent up Maslow's heirarchy was cut short by the avalanche swallowing him, how does one emerge from such a time warp? How does one recapture those essential vibrant youthful years of exploration, of trial and error, of love and loss?
And then I ask myself, how do you? As I experience Proustian moments and travel back in time, that is a sort of recollection of sensibilities through memory. Merely thinking about, savoring a thought, the act of recall is in itself an experience and so, a taking back into oneself what one has lost, let go or moved through. This imaginative brain allows us to experience everything that can be experienced, especially when repeatedly fueled with stories, images, smells, touches. A man or woman trapped in a paralyzed body, can still have (I think!) a vibrant life of the mind, even when their sensory functions cease. And so then could we, whether enslaved or thrown in jail or held captive by our own fears and psychic frailties, have those momentary experiences that are bigger than where we are trapped.
I love stories of couples in their 80's who look at their loved ones and swear they still see their high school sweethearts, amidst the wrinkles and fallen flesh. This is at once heartwarming, to see how love preserves time, but I wonder why we can't also take in the aged, frail, frumpiness and love that for what it is as well. Perhaps only in this youth obsessed culture do we need to imagine our partner captured in that time of exquisite first knowing. Not to say that said couple doesn't also love the 60 years inbetween and respect the travesties of time and how well they and their bodies have weathered them. I just know that some cultures actually revere their elders as repositories of wit, wisdom and sagesse.
Which makes me wonder why we can't stomach the idea of older people making love, why we must cover them up in films with sheets or bustiers or camera angles. I'm not as familiar with senior porn, if it exists, but surely sex between two (or more if that's your ticket) loving partners transcends the shapes, sizes and fitness of the bodies engaged therein. Why are we so stuck on the perfect, youth ideal of sensuality/sexuality? Perhaps because it helps a market economy sell more breast implants (which out here are advertised on billboards next to the casinos), Viagra, BMW's, diet scams, balding remedies. If we all loved these bodies we are in, why would we go shopping?
As I prepare to re-capture my own two youth from sleepover camp (have they grown, will they still like me, do they remember what broccoli tastes like?), I am reminded of those glorious times of freedom from the norm, how as children we (if we were lucky enough) got to spend time just reveling in whatever place we were in, whether, joy, sorrow, anger, glee. Those places, thankfully, are everywhere, wherever we are, for they are within. So perhaps that man who lost 21 years of his chronological life to a cell, never lost his self, his dreams, his thoughts, his moment to moment life. I don't presume to know. (And should read the rest of this man' s story). But, it's just a reminder that maybe our prisons are not so much those huge, daunting edifices where we "punish" people, but rather our own fears, the cells our need to comparmentalize and control, the wardens our willingness to cede power, the barbed wire perimiters merely the bars on our souls.
Yesterdays "This American Life" featured a story about a young man who was wrongly accused of a murder and spent 21 years of his life in jail, beginning when he was 18. I didn't get to hear the whole story but it made me wonder what it's like to lose so much time and what time allows us to do and be in life. I thought of the abrupt life change he must have gone through, from hanging out with his buds on the streets to being incarcerated, life in a cell, with no power to direct his life quest. Of course, this is not knowing what he did in jail, how he spent his time, because I've known of many who have used that time to the best they could, while others don't. But assuming he was not able to pursue his species being, that his rightful ascent up Maslow's heirarchy was cut short by the avalanche swallowing him, how does one emerge from such a time warp? How does one recapture those essential vibrant youthful years of exploration, of trial and error, of love and loss?
And then I ask myself, how do you? As I experience Proustian moments and travel back in time, that is a sort of recollection of sensibilities through memory. Merely thinking about, savoring a thought, the act of recall is in itself an experience and so, a taking back into oneself what one has lost, let go or moved through. This imaginative brain allows us to experience everything that can be experienced, especially when repeatedly fueled with stories, images, smells, touches. A man or woman trapped in a paralyzed body, can still have (I think!) a vibrant life of the mind, even when their sensory functions cease. And so then could we, whether enslaved or thrown in jail or held captive by our own fears and psychic frailties, have those momentary experiences that are bigger than where we are trapped.
I love stories of couples in their 80's who look at their loved ones and swear they still see their high school sweethearts, amidst the wrinkles and fallen flesh. This is at once heartwarming, to see how love preserves time, but I wonder why we can't also take in the aged, frail, frumpiness and love that for what it is as well. Perhaps only in this youth obsessed culture do we need to imagine our partner captured in that time of exquisite first knowing. Not to say that said couple doesn't also love the 60 years inbetween and respect the travesties of time and how well they and their bodies have weathered them. I just know that some cultures actually revere their elders as repositories of wit, wisdom and sagesse.
Which makes me wonder why we can't stomach the idea of older people making love, why we must cover them up in films with sheets or bustiers or camera angles. I'm not as familiar with senior porn, if it exists, but surely sex between two (or more if that's your ticket) loving partners transcends the shapes, sizes and fitness of the bodies engaged therein. Why are we so stuck on the perfect, youth ideal of sensuality/sexuality? Perhaps because it helps a market economy sell more breast implants (which out here are advertised on billboards next to the casinos), Viagra, BMW's, diet scams, balding remedies. If we all loved these bodies we are in, why would we go shopping?
As I prepare to re-capture my own two youth from sleepover camp (have they grown, will they still like me, do they remember what broccoli tastes like?), I am reminded of those glorious times of freedom from the norm, how as children we (if we were lucky enough) got to spend time just reveling in whatever place we were in, whether, joy, sorrow, anger, glee. Those places, thankfully, are everywhere, wherever we are, for they are within. So perhaps that man who lost 21 years of his chronological life to a cell, never lost his self, his dreams, his thoughts, his moment to moment life. I don't presume to know. (And should read the rest of this man' s story). But, it's just a reminder that maybe our prisons are not so much those huge, daunting edifices where we "punish" people, but rather our own fears, the cells our need to comparmentalize and control, the wardens our willingness to cede power, the barbed wire perimiters merely the bars on our souls.
posted by Barbery at 7:31 AM
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