Heroism Project: How Getting Old Impacts Our Writing

If you’re able to do it at all any longer, that is. Chapter 2: Filthy Beauty

Part 1. Awakening Early  

Sometimes, at 3 a.m., I wake up and lie in the dark trying to shut my mind off. 

I think various thoughts, and feelings, partly in control, largely still in the grip of some dream-mood or song lyric worming its way through my brain into mind and spirit centers. 

I begin a kind of mantra, a silent chant, an atheist’s Rosary to quiet my spirit and calm my anxiety. 

Eventually, convinced I haven’t slept a wink, I glance at the clock five minutes later only to see that now: it’s 5:48, almost time for coffee and for writing. And for starting my next day/night cycle until the next 3 a.m. 

Part 2. Middle of the night, again 

Other times when I wake up, stumble in and take a piss, then stumble back to bed and lie down, hoping for sleep. 

But of course, I’m awake now and The Spencer Davis Group is singing/blasting “Gimme, gimme some loving,” over and over in my head. 

Finally, I start to think about my writing. 

I’m almost 75 years old. 

After more than 50 years at it, the writing is finally coming more easily. And lying quietly in the dark I realize that I love to get it just right, or even close enough, like this one. And although I can’t tell you exactly when I drift off again, when I wake up, hours later, I feel utterly happy. 

I pray a lot, during these 3 a.m. sojourns, to a God I don’t believe in, at least not in the ways other people seem to believe in him. The God I pray to isn’t listening, so my words, both mumbled inside my head and whispered softly aloud and typed here right now are for myself not for him or it. 

This is how an old man keeps going, keeps the words and the work flowing — Gimme gimme some loving! You betcha!