It hits you all of a sudden. I’m no longer young. That’s one way of putting it. And then your sons are no longer young either. Not like me, but taking their share of pills and medicines.
What strikes me most, perhaps, is the lack of inspiration. Oh, it will come, my friends say. So far though it hasn’t.
I refuse to be categorized as old. Although I suppose 95 is not exactly young. Old, elderly. No longer young. Of a certain age. Aged. It is all in how you feel. Sometimes we do all feel “old”, when we realize we can no longer do what we once did. When events of the past pile up and we realize others have not lived through them. I sit there, in a chair, a cane by my side. Someone else is getting me a glass of water. Someone else is helping me get here or there.
Perhaps to keep our dialogue alive, for now let me share some of the poems and quotes that date back to many years ago, or that I have only recently discovered. I kept some in a folder, and, since we have become friends, it is time to let you see what I was thinking then, what struck me enough to want to keep note of whatever it was.
In lieu of new inspirational thoughts, I can dole out my “pearls of wisdom” over the coming weeks in the hopes that inspiration is still there, only hiding under the covers.
ONE
Let me start with this observation from an elevator operator in NYC in 1953.
“Sometimes I close the gates and say “freight only” and go riding up and down all by myself.”
Don’t we all, every so often, shut out the outside world to wander around, by ourselves, in that infinitely varied inner world? I wonder, though, what this gentleman was thinking as he rode up and down all by himself.
Erika Bizzarri 
Love this, Erika. Looking forward to seeing you in May. I’d love to film some of your story telling.
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Great to have you back Erika.
See you again in June.
Mike
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This is a wonderful and emotionally moving gem, Erika! So few words, such expansive memories. The man in the elevator is all of us, at one point or another. I can hear him humming as he ascends and descends….
James
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I don’t know Erika……that sounded pretty inspired to me!
xxC
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This is a wonderful and emotionally moving gem, Erika! So few words, such expansive memories. The man in the elevator is all of us, at one point or another. I can hear him humming as he ascends and descends….
Abbracci!
James
James
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Erika, I know the feeling, when everything is in your past, including many of your best friends who are now no longer living! This is also especially true when world events are so depressing, and you can’t imagine what the future will hold for your children and grandchildren. I busy myself working on a book which I hope to have published, but even this is a totally different proposition from what it was in the past. I guess all we can say is to hang in there and take each day at a time. All my love, Jerry
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Good idea Erika! I look forward to seeing some more of your gems from earlier years (it really isn’t worth pushing oneself to write when there’s no inspiration and no necessity, is it?). I do like this reminiscence of the elevator man! I wonder what thoughts passed through his mind when he was going up and down on his own like a yoyo.
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