squish

I don't want to squish things or watch people squish things, and apparently this means I'm old and out of touch with the zeitgeist.

I think a lot about what it means to be "old" and how we use this word to describe a distance between what we want to be and what we are. When I was younger, in the domain of fully young, I used the fun phrase "abject failure" to describe the distance between what I thought I should be and what I was. But old is nicer in someways because there's an inevitability to it that relieves me of some of the guilt and shame associated with abject failure.

I live with my mother who is old. She's old in the sense that she's often the oldest person in any place she is. She's old in the sense that the world is hard for her to navigate in new and unexpected ways. She's old because all her friends are dying and we speak about it with matter-of-fact directness.

I'm old because my face looks different and my health problems and limitations are in the chronic-but-manageable category. Things aren't going to get better, they are instead definitely going to get worse, but I am still here and myself and my desires are still mostly inline with the reality of my body and mind.

The world out there, of squishables and tik-tok therapists and clap backs and instagram astrology and AI-generated images of cats and dogs and deserts, that world makes me old in a way that feels pretend. It's the make believe realm of the attention economy and it doesn't have that much to do with me.

The New York Times has a different think piece on the minds of the youths every other day. This week they don't like working. Next week then don't like sex. Tomorrow it might be a return to carpet weaving that defines them, it's impossible to know for sure.