Summer XV. Age + online communities

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XIV. Climate

I have been at the seaside -- enjoying it, yes, but in what a doddering, senile sort of way! Is it I who used to drink the strong wind like wine, who ran exultingly along the wet sands and leapt from rock to rock, barefoot, on the slippery seaweed, who breasted the swelling breakers, and shouted with joy as it buried me in gleaming foam? At the seaside I knew no such thing as bad weather; there were but changes of eager mood and full-blooded life. Now, if the breeze blows too roughly, if there comes a pelting shower, I must look for shelter, and sit with my cloak about me. It is but a new reminder that I do best to stay at home, travelling only in reminiscence.

At Weymouth I enjoyed a hearty laugh, one of the good things not easy to get after middle age. There was a notice of steamboats which ply along the coast, steamboats recommended to the public as being “replete with lavatories and a ladies’ saloon.” Think how many people read this without a chuckle!

Generations.

One of the annoyances of growing older is that you begin to feel like an old fogey for liking music that, strictly speaking, belongs to a younger generation. I lay claim to the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but I view the music from the following three decades as belonging to the generations going to high school and college at the time.

In public places I hear far too much of the music of my generation -- it isn’t that I don’t like it, but I’ve been listening to much of it steadily for four decades or longer. My personal music collection goes back in time as much as it goes forward, with much from the 1930’s and 1940’s, Jazz mostly. But I’ve also picked up a fair amount of more recent Pop and what would have been termed Folk Rock in the ‘70s.

Susanna Hoffs and Mathew Sweet (Sid n Susie) have recorded three “Under the Covers” collections of what I suppose could be termed “Oldies but goodies” today. I’ve always loved Susanna Hoffs’... voice, and she sounds even better on these songs than she does as a Bangle. What I like about these versions are that they are true to the original but with Susanna’s distinctive voice usually featured (they don’t “style” the song so that it is almost unrecognizable). I hope they keep going and cover the ‘90s and oughts as well. If this means Susie has to cover Katy, Gaga, and Adele then so be it.

Online Community.

Being the oldest member of a (small, private) online community can be quite strange. The problems of twenty-somethings (and one has to suppose that people who spend an inordinate amount of time on social media may have more than the normal share of personal problems) are not, for the most part, my problems. I may be able to recall when I was rocked by the stormy seas of hormones, and desperately sought my place in the world and physical, personal contact of most any kind -- in fact I do recall this, though the details have, thank Goat, grown vague -- but it no longer roils my very being.

I’ve tried to provide perspective, but there is so much good advice that is nothing but meaningless words until you yourself learn that lesson. Here I’m reminded of the story of Cassandra, one of my favorite things from Greek literature. What I have in mind is that Cassandra had the gift of seeing the future but the curse of never being believed. (I have a problem with this “curse” idea. The virtue, to my mind, of the Cassandra story is that what she sees is a future that can’t be changed. If you can change it, then it isn’t really the future. You can’t have it both ways.)

I do think people sharing their angst in a safe, private, online place like our forum is a positive thing, though possibly not so much for the person with the problem. The others, who are not currently overwhelmed, can read, recognize that they have been there before, and try to respond with something helpful. Perhaps they think that this person is even worse off than they are (I know that feeling helped me at one point in my college years) or they realize that this despair, which they’ve shared in the past, really doesn’t look quite so bad to them today.

Fortunately, the chances of all the women’s cycles meshing is almost zero... though there have been times when one would doubt even that -- though how that would be possible with a globally distributed population where hardly anyone ever comes into physical contact with another board member, is beyond me.

Next: Summer XVI. On the road.