Elderism #10

A blinged-up Elizabeth Taylor has been sighted recently in her wheelchair at the West Hollywood gay bar, the Abbey. The screen legend has presented the Abbey with a gold-framed portrait of herself, which, according to one regular, has become “quite a shrine.”

When Taylor showed up one night for a benefit for the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention hotline for gay youth, she ordered an apple martini. But on seeing a fellow drinker’s watermelon martini, she changed her mind, commenting,

That looks fun.

(New York Post, People, Janet Charlton’s Hollywood, Tabloid Wreck)

Elderism #9

I went to Carnegie Hall last night to hear the virtuosic pianist and composer Keith Jarrett perform. (I realize that he’s only in his 60’s, and thus not really an “elder”, but, please: indulge me). Jarrett–who played with his back to the audience–walked over to a microphone five times during the course of the evening, each time uttering a single sentence, including his opener,

“I just want to say that I won’t be saying anything tonight.”

Of the other four sentences which he did or did not say, the most beguiling was,

“Don’t listen to anybody tell you what energy source we need.”

Elderism #8

In The Economist‘s obit for Marjorie Dean, the mainstay of that publication’s financial pages for 49 years, we learn that the gimlet-eyed Brit journalist often persevered through hard times by quoting Don Marquis‘s comic poem, “archy and mehitabel“:

‘it’s cheerio my deario that pulls a lady through”

A winning elderism. But I also like one of Dean’s own aphoristic concoctions: a woman in a man’s world, she once lunched at a City bank where the men were offered two lamb chops, but Dean only one. “Come back!,” she instructed the waiter,

“Give me the other chop!”

Elderism #7

The Prophet Muhammad, in the Hadith:

“Trust in God, but tie your camel.”

Elderism #6

Somerset Maugham:

        “Excess on occasion is exhilirating. It prevents moderation

        from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”

(The Summing Up, 1938)

Elderism #5

What older British men are thinking about:

“The subject of my dissatisfaction is men’s underpants…

On rare occasions one will experience a tightness across

the pelvis at about midday, progressing to real discomfort

towards the evening. This indicates that, in moments of

distraction, a misplaced foot has resulted in two legs in

one leg-hole.”

(The Oldie)

Elderism #4

An exterminator named John Murphy, in Pest Control Technology magazine:

“You always have to think beyond the structure. Think about

what is going on underneath and all around, because that is

where the rats are located.”

Think beyond the structure, friends.

Elderism #3

What an older gentleman who had set up his easel on the side of Lincoln Road in Miami Beach blurted out at me while he painted feverishly:

        “Sharpen your edges!”

Elderism #2

In the catalog to her currently-touring exhibition, 96 year-old sculptor Louise Bourgeois states:

        “The spiral–I love the spiral–represents control and freedom.”

A fairly innocuous statement, were it not preceded by these five sentences:

        “The spiral is important to me. It is a twist. As a child, after washing

        the tapestries in the river, I would turn and twist and ring them with

        three others or more to ring the water out. Later I would dream of

        getting rid of my father’s mistress. I would do it in my dreams by

        ringing her neck.”

(New York Review of Books)

An Elderism

The words of advice that Arianna Huffington’s mother used to give young Arianna and her sister:

        “Darling, let it marinate.”

(New Yorker)