24 January - Death & Life

American friend of a friend (similar age to me? Big younger, who knows) at dinner asks me what my blog is about. I tell her it’s about considering how you dislike the ageing process and by writing about it you try and remind yourself that life is good and it will get progressively worse inside your body/bones, but your brain may go the same way so you won’t notice/care or if your brain stays sharp it may alter what it thinks and you may just accept the inevitable etc, etc.
She looks at me wide eyed and says ‘Why do you worry about it so much? What a strange thing to be preoccupied with’.
Well, that may be because I’m European and just stepping out in Rome or Venice you’re confronted with decaying former great cities (they still are great, but you know what I mean, the masonry is propped up) and your thinking is of a more melancholic, romantic, depressed nature when it comes to life… and death. In fact ‘Death in Venice’, c’est moi. And she’s American and probably my considerations are not part of the genetic make up (unless you’re Erica Jong), more like let’s go invade some other country and bring them democracy and Macdonalds. Oh but am digressing and probably doing her a disservice as she’d said she lives here as she fell in love with Paris.