"They show many different reactions . . . when faced with failure.

Some grow angry and fly into a rage; some try to evade the issue by distracting attention from the unpleasant situation. . . . Some try to bluff their way through, refusing to admit their inadequacy. Others blame persons or objects instead of admitting their own limitations, like the one who, when she could not fit wooden forms into the holes of a board from which they had been cut, exclaimed, 'You just ought to have bigger holes! These aren't right at all!'"

(from Parenthood in a Free Nation, by Ethel Kawin, 1963)

More on oldness (and me)

I should say, in re: my post in re: Old Women Look Like This, by Susan M. Schultz that my remarks are colored by these factors:

- I've been visiting our next door neighbor, who is dying of cancer, in a nursing home recently, and I haven't been in one for a while;

- I have a father who is 83 and - knock wood - lucid, healthy, and mobile (for now);

- I am not getting any younger and have yet to fully come to terms with that fact.

I think that, if I see the chapbook as being tragic, rather than - what? - a romance? - then it probably has as much to do with me as with it. It also has to do with the fact that the chapbook asks us to take in a lot of people at a glance - so the full force of dementia in its many permutations hits one all at once. In this respect, the work is different than the same author's Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008), which chronicles her mother's decline into Alzheimer's (and her own responses, in historical context) - backwards, in good blog (and dementia) fashion. The upshot is that the change, while already an accomplished fact, is revealed more gradually - and we focus on one sufferer in greater detail. Moreover, the loss only becomes fully apparent at the end.

But I still think that the power of Old Women comes from its unwillingness to try to give a happy ending to a process that resists it - a rare resistance to the forced optimism of American culture.

"The Civil War - the War of Northern Aggression - was still a vivid reality for some people, my grandmother included. The mere existence of Yankees was a difficult proposition for her. . . . Once, when I asked her what was wrong with Yankees, she said, 'They put sugar on their meat.'"

- James Conaway, Memphis Afternoons

_Old Women Look Like This_, by Susan M. Schultz

Old Women Look Like This, by Susan M. Schultz, is a (free!) e-chapbook that came out this year from Argotist Ebooks. It was inspired by, and partially ekphrastically responds to, paintings of elderly people by Elizabeth Berdann (one of which graces the front cover) – portraits framed by openings in the shape of a suite of cards (hearts, diamonds). Each of the old people in Schultz’ poems are identified only by first name and age. “Do not refer to them as them or as they or as those people, because we could be they as they could be someone else.” Indeed – and, demographically, if you live in the US, you have a pretty good chance of being one of those people – many of whom, in this book as in real life, suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, or just confusion.

While it would be an overstatement to say that Old Women Look Like This makes me want to slit my wrists to avoid growing old, let me put it this way: if I were the sort of person who liked to get drunk and drive real, real fast, this book would not be an argument for changing ways. “’Are you my mother?’ Martha asks them each, and they said no, they were not hers but someone else’s mother, sister, aunt, niece. ‘I took care of you,’ one said, ‘but I am not your mother . . ..’” Martha is 92, and she is not unlike the other women and men in the nursing home. Schultz paints their portraits to rather chilling effect, by playing off children’s books, Wallace Stevens (mashed up w/the Alzheimer’s Assoc. 2010 report), or by creating a scary, perfunctory, and breathless nursing-home soap opera. “Ronald Reagan (90) Remembers His Challenger Disaster Speech” samples and scrambles the (even-then-defamiliar) words of that president. There is an engaging variety of verse and prose forms here that tell the story of Juanita Goggins, first African-American woman elected to the South Carolina legislature, who freezes to death in the house where she lives alone.

The final poem, “Waiting Adults,” gives only initials for names (and ages, of course): “P (82) is sweet and kind and listens to Christian Radio. She misses her baby, and often cries over him.” “J (85) is well dressed and sports a mustache. He moves constantly, as if he has somewhere to go.” Perhaps the most poignant poem of the bunch is the second-to-last, “Anne of Manor Care Gables,” which depicts “the residents” as a group: “The residents are all relinquished./ . . . The residents do not recognize themselves, boxed up and memorialized beside their doors. . . ./ The residents are like children. No one says that children are like them.”

This book could be seen as a kind of coda (or sequel) to Schultz’ groundbreaking Dementia Blog, which is, in fact, the blog the author kept as her own mother slid into Alzheimer’s. Like that book, this one stares straight at you and at the “residents” at the same time, recognizing that you – and those you love – are them.

"It is true that man can only become man by first suppressing this unhistorical element in his thoughts, comparisons, distinctions, and conclusions, letting a clear sudden light break through these misty clouds by his power of turning the past to the uses of the present. But an excess of history makes him flag again, while without the veil of the unhistorical he would never have the courage to begin."

- Nietzsche, “Use and Abuse of History”

- resource depletion weakened the internal economy
- resource depletion abroad led to mass influxes of peoples
- the military scarfed up increasing amounts of recourses
- the military increasingly relied on foreign mercenaries
- class stratification intensified
- large landholders drove small ones from the land
- state power became more and more concentrated
- state power fell under control of wealthy individuals
- and the corrupt officials who served them
- municipal government was being financially ruined
- a large cohort in both center and periphery was unemployed
- the infrastructure was decaying
- taxes fell disproportionately on the poor and middle class
- the wealthy avoided paying taxes altogether
- religious controversy played a central role in statecraft
- clergy actively intervened in politics
- the people withdrew all loyalty from the state
- and regarded events with steadfast apathy
- social deterioration and anarchy resulted
- politicians proclaimed the greatness of the nation
- a new regime assumed control

In the 1950s and 60s, when industrial workers in the US were earning a good wage (in large part due to the strength of trade unions in that period), they were receptive to the notion, ubiquitous on TV, that everyone was middle class. It stuck - esp. since TV hasn't stopped sending that message since then. It was in this way, and not by confrontation, that capitalists eliminated the working class in America (and with it, working-class solidarity). So now that we’re back in the 1880s, everyone is still middle class.

"A lot of the stuff that I wrote and said that I thought was funny when I was younger turned out to be merely clever. Later, it started to appear merely precious. I thought I was blasé – I actually felt blasé – but it turns out I cared a very great deal. I'm even pretty sure that on occasion I had an 'idea.' The false modesty, the smirking abjection, the pathetic aesthetic and the rest of it now looks like shtick of the most unselfconscious, prepostmodern, late-capitalist variety. Who knew."

Machines are taking over the world - I was being chased by a knife- throwing woman who said it was all done with mirrors - and she was working for some big-brother-type person - she said she had to do it, b/c they were holding her son hostage - very frustrating for me, b/c how you gonna defend against something like that? - something about needing to hide something in my suitcase (are they moving me to another prison?) - is part of this taking place in a motor court, or was that another dream?

Then a neighbor built a pavillion on the corner to cover up a hole in the ground.

Something about children and wild cats - the snow is going to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate - packages of disassembled, shrink-wrapped houses that we thought were just already built little houses that we wanted to buy; some ovbviously are those houses, but they're old and they've just been disassembled.