I'm getting closer to the age of 57. That's getting closer to 60. That, my friends, is old. Older than my pitiful imagination is ready to encompass, older than I have ever really considered contemplating from the "inside", as it were. Retirement? The concept becomes more real when 60 looms, I can tell you. (Insert long screed on how 60 is but the beginning of new chapters, new vistas, new hippity hop non stop fun under the sun.) Fuck it. Sixty is very close to that other side where no one takes you seriously anymore not that anyone every took me all that seriously in the first place. White hair, no hair, an inability to remember the names of your cousins. Or your sisters. Or if you have any sisters. Or brothers. I have a sister, no brothers and some cousins, all of whom I could name after my morning bath and just before lunch. I don't remember names after lunch. It's in the contract. No names after lunch. Now the names of their kids. I could do that, but on a weekend, rested, at home with the address book. I can usually remember my own name. That's good. That's a good sign, a good indicator that things are going well. Until you don't and you hear the truck pull up.

Well, this has drifted now, hasn't it? I suppose the one thing that worries me is what exactly am I going to do with myself for the next decade or two? The attempts and adventures that fascinated me as a youngster don't fascinate me the way they once did when finally given the chance to meet them up close. I bitch about not listening to music the way I once listened to music anymore, although I have the Australian video production of La Boheme playing in the background. Still, even then, that says it: There was a time when music wasn't altogether unlike a good fuck. Erotic, neurotic, who knows? The listening got me off. How many things in your life have you found to make you feel like that? Music for me was one. Writing might have approached, given the chance. I divorced both.

Don't see myself starting any new careers of interest any time soon, although you never know. As a youngster I checked out my share, how others made their livings, made their lives. Everybody does that, don't they? Checks out the world around them when they're young? Walks a step or two on the wild side? Eats pizza for breakfast? Drinks beer in church? Drives down the strip to the Dairy Queen to laugh with the ladies? In Pleasantville. In Beirut.

Mimi and Rodolpho are singing their duet now at the gate. What must it have been for Puccini to write that? I'm glad to have heard that early in life. Maybe it brings back memories etched in that time. Meeting and parting, meeting and parting. That's what La Boheme is about. Not a lot of family time for Mimi and Rodolpho, raising kids and putting together their 401k for an afterlife on the links. Mimi didn't make it to 60, never touched 30, so what am I complaining about? Nothing really, this Tuesday of a once only on a Millenium February 29th.