"I'm getting lost in your curls

I'm getting pushed back on a whim

Our breaths get wind

Back to the time when we were green

I know we have changed, but I still grin,

cause i can't wait to see you "

BLUISH. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

Old people are great.

When I see them, especially older couples, a certain, internal trill of "awww" echoes inside me, and my first thought is that they are adorable. But then I was thinking about this- they arent cute. They are.. Weathered? They are years upon layered years of experience tightly balled up in battered, wrinkled folds of skin. Insight and acumen locked soundlessly away behind lined foreheads and skulls, and the weight of all they know often unrecognizble to young people, like myself. The ones in the dementia unit.. crazy? incomprehensible? I couldnt help feeling like although they might be the ones under specialized care and who babble insanely, I was the foolish one for thinking I was untouchable. Life is not invincible. Their crumbled, defeated state is not going to pardon me. I will not be passed over, or forsaken. Old age is so omnipotent.

I also used to think when I grew up I wanted to be very rich. I did not imagine this in a shallow way, I think, I just wanted to travel, send my children to good schools, and have a big house. I dont know what turned on its head and inside out inside of me, but recently I've just wanted to be young. Like twenties, and live in an apartment. I picture it as a movie almost. I eat at the cafe and pay in change, I shop at the thrift store down the block and bike everywhere instead of driving. I spend days upon days in the library so I dont have to buy books. I read the newspaper from the local cafe.. I want to live on the bare bone of the rich meat of life, at least while I'm young and spirited enough to handle this. I picture the power getting shut off once, because we forgot to pay the bills, and its like a campout in our small kitchen, now lit with candles and illuminated curtains from the night moon, and we laugh because I'm in love with my husband and there are more important things and none of it matters a bit