Tag: Writing

How Many People Listen to You

by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/25

It wasn’t until I couldn’t talk to my old friend that I became truly puzzled about a recent piece of advice. I lost Connell, someone I’ve known for 58 years, last April. I keep wanting to talk to him, but he’s no longer there to hear me.

My social media algorithms keep sending me various kinds of warnings about dealing with life in my seventies. A recent video told me people would stop listening to me. And, if I were a parent, I shouldn’t be shocked if my children stopped listening to me, too. What did that mean?

At first, I didn’t think that advice applied to me because I don’t have children, and I have lots of friends. I wasn’t even sure what they were talking about. I wondered if it was similar to how some of my older female friends talk about how men no longer look at them. Does becoming old make what we have to say unworthy of hearing?

I’ve always assumed I would be ignored when I got old. I remember when we were young, we’d say, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Now I don’t trust anyone under sixty. Was the advice about that kind of age prejudice? Actually, moving into my seventies makes me distrust everyone of all ages.

The video said people would stop listening to you once you got into your seventies. What do I have to say that people would no longer care to hear? And why was it a warning? Were they talking about loneliness? And who wouldn’t be listening? And does that include me? Will I stop wanting to listen to other people?

Many of my family and friends became quiet as they got older. Did they say less because they no longer cared what other people had to say and stopped listening, too?

I often want to talk to people who have died. They can’t listen anymore. Is my desire to communicate with them revealing why I want people to listen to me? And what do I have to say that will make me feel bad if it’s not heard?

Mostly, we chit-chat in life. We find damn few people to converse with on a deep level. Was that what the warning was about? Was the warning suggesting that meaningful conversations will disappear?

As I get older, I feel I’m withdrawing from the world. Maybe the warning is suggesting that as everyone withdraws, we’ll stop talking to each other?

I remember an acid trip I had back in the sixties. I took a hit that I didn’t know was a four-way hit, and got rather high. I lost my sense of self. I felt every person dwelt in their own island universe. And that real communication wasn’t possible, and the best we could do was like tossing a message in a bottle onto the ocean, hoping someone would find and read it. I sometimes feel that getting older will be like that. Was that the warning?

Do we have a need to be heard that goes unfulfilled as we age?

Maybe someone older can clarify what that warning meant. Leave a comment.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure how many people do listen to me. Oh sure, I converse with friends all the time. But that’s chit-chat. I have a few friends with whom I believe we resonate on the same wavelength. Was the warning telling me that those people will disappear in my seventies? That is a depressing thought.

I have one last theory. The older I get, the less energy I have to express myself. So I don’t make the effort. Maybe, if we don’t make the effort to send, we stop making the effort to receive.

JWH

Watching Old Movies vs. Old Television Shows in Old Age

by James Wallace Harris, 9/20/25

For years, my wife and I have been watching old TV shows at night. We just finished fifteen seasons of ER. It’s our ritual to watch a couple of hours of TV together. However, I asked Susan if we could watch movies for a few months, and she agreed. Susan prefers TV shows.

I’ve always been a big fan of Turner Classic Movies (TCM). I’ve loved old movies since I was a kid, when I would stay up watching movies all night in the summertime. Stations back then would play old movies overnight. That was in the 1960s, and they would show films from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The kind that TCM shows today.

Since I retired, I discovered I can’t watch TV by myself. My mind gets restless. But if I have someone to watch with me, my mind can relax. I can’t explain that. I’ve been craving old movies due to that affliction, so I’m thankful that Susan has agreed to watch old movies with me.

Sadly, watching TCM films hasn’t been as fun as I hoped. Has something happened to me? Last night we watched The Lady Eve (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda – classic screwball comedy. When I was young, I would have rated this film A+. Now, it was just a C. Susan gave it the same grade. Our friends Mike and Betsy had seen this flick a few days ago, and they were also disappointed. The TCM host gushed about The Lady Eve, and IMDB gives it a 7.7 out of 10 score. That doesn’t sound high, but it is. Anything over a 7 is generally something good.

Mike and Betsy felt the film jumped the shark when the Stanwyck character passes herself off as a different woman to Fonda’s character, and he believed her. That didn’t bother Susan and me.

I enjoyed all the innuendos and double entendres. The movie is a goofy take on sex and love. And I’m a sucker for good character actors, and this film had many of my favorites (Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, and Eric Blore).

I remember being completely enchanted by The Lady Eve thirty years ago, so why did I have to force myself to watch it last night? I think the answer is binge-watching television. We’ve been altered by streaming TV.

We just finished watching 331 episodes of ER. Every episode was more entertaining to me than The Lady Eve, even the ones I found somewhat disappointing. Susan and I generally watched two episodes a night, but sometimes we’d sneak another one or two episodes in during the day. We were addicted. I always craved 8:00 pm because I wanted to see another two episodes.

Old movies, or even new movies, just don’t have the addictive quality of a great television show. That’s why Susan prefers TV. And maybe I do too. I think preference began when we could binge-watch an entire TV show from pilot to finale.

I’ve always thought movies were artistically superior to television shows. And maybe they often are. But I don’t get attached to the characters like I do with Mrs. Maisel, Perry Mason, or Beaver Cleaver.

Great movies often have more to say. Great films used to have better acting and higher-quality production. That’s not always true anymore.

Ace in the Hole (1951) had impressive character development. It had a tight plot. The cinematography was excellent. The ending was very satisfying. And it had a lot of delicious moral ambiguity. It’s an A+ picture. It even makes a good episode of Perry Mason look mediocre. Why then is watching Perry, Della, and Paul more addictive? And why was the newer HBO Perry Mason even more intensely addictive? The answer, I believe, is the newer Perry Mason, which combined a TV characterization with movie-level production values.

What if the characters Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve came back every week? Is that why we loved The Thin Man and Tarzan movies so much? Are movies less satisfying than television because the story ends? And is that why so many films today at the theaters are franchises?

JWH

My Attachment to Old Magazines

by James Wallace Harris, 9/6/25

I’ve always loved magazines. I worked six years in the periodicals department of a university library. As a kid, I loved all kinds of magazines. Even before I could read, my sister and I found a pile of old magazines in the attic of the house my parents were renting. The pile was as high as we were. It was old picture magazines, like Life and Look. Becky and I loved looking at the pictures. Magazines were like television, showing us people and places we’d never seen.

Later on, when I had a few coins, I’d buy magazines like Popular Science and MAD. Eventually, I discovered science fiction magazines. My favorite was The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but I also loved Galaxy, Analog, Amazing, and Fantastic. I eventually subscribed to the first three around 1968. I also loved finding old issues at used bookshops for a dime or quarter.

By 1975, I had collected more than three-fourths of F&SF’s back issues. By then, I had also acquired pulps going back to 1928. Holding those magazines made me feel like I owned a piece of the past. I loved that. But in 1975, I had to sell my magazine collection.

Then in the 2010s, I started collecting those old magazines again through eBay. I eventually found 90% of the issues of F&SF published before 1975, and about 30% of those published after that. I also picked up about 95% of Galaxy.

Today, I started thinking about selling those old magazines. I took down the December 1961 issue of F&SF and read the beginning of each story. Every story hooked me, but I didn’t keep reading. I have this tremendous attachment to these old magazines, but I also feel a great need to have fewer possessions.

I have scans of all these magazines that I read on my tablet. In fact, it’s easier to read the scans than the original paper copies. The paper copies are becoming fragile. They are collector items, and I don’t want to hurt them.

I considered donating my magazine collection to the Friends of the Library, but I worry they won’t receive the love they deserve. I’m arranging to sell them on eBay. That way, a collector will acquire them. But it’s disturbing me to do this.

When I held the December 1961 issue of F&SF, it triggered a wave of nostalgia. It hurt me to imagine parting with it. I don’t value things. My truck is 26 years old. My watch cost $15. My clothes are Amazon Basics. I see no point in gold or diamonds. There’s nothing I own that’s expensive or trendy. If I’m not using something, I give it away.

If I had the choice between having the Mona Lisa on my wall or a complete run of F&SF, I’d pick the magazines.

Why am I so attached to these old magazines? It’s not the content because I have digital copies of all of them.

The best answer I can think of is this: Holding them recalls the past that no longer exists. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have that connection to the past. Their covers are like photographs that remind me of who I used to be. Buying them on eBay was like buying back part of me that no longer exists.

I need to let them go. I feel like the kid in an old movie who has to free a wild animal they rescued. I rationalize to myself that whoever buys them will love them in the same way I have.

Over the last decade, since I’ve been retired, I’ve been trying to recapture my past by buying things I once owned. But I don’t want to be some old boomer dude living in the past.

Psychologically, I didn’t think I’d live this long. Now that I’m 73, I’m wondering, what if I live another decade or two? I don’t want to waste all that time living in the past.

I wonder if we recall who we were when it feels like the end is approaching. I’m not feeling that now. I wonder if I will buy another run of F&SF when I’m 88?

JWH

Visiting the ER Makes Me Philosophical

by James Wallace Harris, 8/25/25

Friday night, I went to the ER. I arrived at 7:15 pm and left at 2:45 am. At 73, I’ve been to the ER more than a few times. It’s always a fascinating experience despite the pain that brought me there and the agony of waiting to be seen.

Rejuvenation

Last fall, I started working in the yard and began to feel stronger. It made me more active. By spring, I had lost twenty pounds. When it got warm, I switched to walking for exercising, something I hadn’t been able to do since Obama was President. In other words, I felt better than I had in years.

That was quite a dramatic transformation. I had been having various health problems since my forties and had undergone surgeries three years running, starting in 2020. I had accepted I was on a downward path and couldn’t imagine having my health on an upward trajectory again.

Mentally, this rejuvenation changed me. I was having more people over and going out more. I felt like I was turning back the clock. I felt younger. I started doing things I haven’t done in years and began hoping to do even more in the future. One of the fun things I had started doing was playing Mahjong. Susan and I had begun to visit games around town. It made me want to get out again, which probably surprised Susan. Mahjong is hard. I need to think faster to play it, and that felt challenging.

I even went to my doctor to have tests done on my heart to see how much I could push things. I wanted to do more physical things.

I wasn’t completely healthy. I still had aches and pains. But I was keeping them under control with physical therapy exercises. But the miracle was walking for exercise. I started out by walking around one small block once. Over weeks, I built up stamina. Eventually, I was walking three or four laps every morning. It felt great.

I was worried about my heart and the strange twinges of pain in my right side. I asked my doctor. We talked about some possibilities. We knew I had gallstones. We were going to run tests after doing the tests on my heart. Because I’ve had heart problems before, she was more concerned about that.

The ER

Two days before the ER, I felt more rejuvenated than I had in years, so it was a shock to need to go to the ER again. I didn’t feel bad mentally. I felt healthy and clear-headed, except that I had intense shooting pains in my side and back. At 6:30 pm Friday, I decided Susan should drive me to the ER to see if they meant something serious.

We got to the ER at 7:15 pm. They checked my vitals, set up an IV, and then told me to wait in chairs. The place was crowded. I knew it would take hours, so I told Susan to go home. She’s been having her own health problems, and she had left dinner half-prepared. I didn’t want to waste that food.

Being alone made me think about what it would be like if I didn’t have Susan. I imagined living on my own, doing everything by myself. I love working alone at home, but I hate being alone in life. Getting old makes you philosophical, and so does waiting in an ER for hours.

Looking around, I saw some people were by themselves, some were with spouses, and some were with their whole families. From listening in on conversations, I learned that many in the waiting room had been there for hours. Some of those people were waiting for a hospital room to free up. Many of those had wrapped themselves in white blankets and were trying to sleep. The ER had two racks of warm blankets. I love it when they put those warm blankets on you in surgery.

Most of the people in the waiting room were waiting in silence. Some were moaning, one guy was softly crying while his wife hugged him. One poor girl was loudly groaning in pain periodically. I wondered if she was in labor. I was glad that only one person was coughing.

I tried to be still because moving sent shooting pains through me. I wanted to be as stoic as possible. But sometimes pains just shot through me, and I had to jerk about a bit. I knew a few people were looking at me like I was looking at them and wondering what was wrong. I wished I knew.

Before midnight, they called me back. They put me in a small room divided by a cloth curtain. In the other half, they were examining a teenage boy while his mother watched. I heard all the details. They weren’t nice.

They took more vitals from me, and eventually, a tech took me to get a CT scan. I love the sound CT scanners make. It was quite painful to get into position and then back on my feet again. Everywhere I went, they asked if I wanted a wheelchair. I knew I looked bad, but I didn’t want to be bad enough to need a wheelchair. I’ve often seen old people refuse help; now I know why.

They took me back to the room. A sign on the wall said it took three hours to get a CT result. But the PA told the kid who also got a CT scan it would take about an hour.

Around 1:30 am Saturday morning the CT scan results came back. It was nothing I had imagined. I had two more hernias. I’ve already had three repaired surgically. And one hernia was interfering with the tube that goes from my kidney to my bladder. That might explain the weird pains in my side. And then the PA said, “And you have a stone in one of your kidneys.” She explained it wasn’t causing the pain now.

At least it wasn’t cancer, a ruptured gallbladder, or a blocked intestine, or any of the other scary conditions I fantasized about.

The kidney stone did scare me. It wasn’t descending so it shouldn’t be causing pain but they warned me it could try to pass. It might not happen, or happen years from now, or next week.

Evidently, the pain that made moving or standing so unpleasant was my old ordinary sciatica and muscle spasms caused by spinal stenosis. That was diagnosed almost twenty years ago. Sitting at the computer or standing or walking for any length of time aggravates it.

Because I was walking more, and writing more at the computer, I thought maybe my spinal stenosis was better because I had lost twenty pounds. I can’t explain why I was given a temporary reprieve.

The PA gave me 15mg of Toradol in my IV. It was magic. Thirty minutes later I would stand up. I still hurt, but I didn’t look like I needed a wheelchair.

The Future

I have to admit this episode put me in a tailspin. I was all geared up to feel younger and healthier again. I got a taste of being more active, and I liked it. I want that feeling back.

However, aging doesn’t work that way. It’s always a slow decline. Now I knew there could be some upswings in my health, too. I feel like I’m flying a plane I know is going to crash. For a few months, I forgot that. Going to the ER reminded me that it’s still going to crash. However, the past months taught me I could sometimes regain altitude.

Experiencing feeling younger for several months makes me wonder if I could get that feeling back again. I’m back where I can’t walk for exercise. And sitting at the computer makes my back hurt worse. I’m scheduled to see a urologist this coming Friday. I figure another surgery is in my future, and then there’s a time ticking bomb in my kidney. It took me months to recover from my last hernia surgery.

But what can I do to get that healthy feeling back? It might take months, or even years. I’m not giving up. Could losing another twenty pounds help? What diet or exercise to I need to pursue?

I’ve already returned to my adapted methods of coping. I’m back to using a laptop while reclined in a La-Z-Boy. I can walk long enough to do the dishes or go grocery shopping. But I really want to walk again for exercise. I wonder if that’s possible?

I only know one person my age that hasn’t had any health problems. It’s normal to break down in your seventies. I have to keep philosophical about that. But I also want to beat the system.

I’m reminded of a Vaugh Bode underground comic strip from the 1970s. In it two lizard like creatures are tied up. They’ve been blinded, and their legs have been cut off. One of them says to the other, “When it gets dark, I’z is gonna escape” That’s me at this moment.

When I left the ER, I took a Lyft home at 2:45 am. Several friends offered to come take me home. I appreciate that. But I like the feeling of still being able to take care of myself. I know that won’t always be true.

Riding through the dark, deserted streets was surreal. It was quite pleasant. I knew I would need another surgery, but I’ve been through them before. Passing a kidney stone sounded extremely unpleasant. I know just how unpleasant. I once watched a man in the urologist’s office passing a stone. But like the Stoics say, this too will pass. I’m lucky that it wasn’t something that couldn’t be fixed. Too many people I’ve known have already died, and almost everyone I know my age is suffering from something.

Many of my friends are worse off than I am. It’s funny, but I think everyone suffers what they know and wouldn’t trade it for someone else’s kind of suffering.

I remember how being healthier made me feel positive about the future. It was just for a few months. I want that feeling back.

The most unsettling aspect of all this is not knowing the answers. Doctors are more likely to know than I do, but I’m not sure they always know. I certainly can only speculate, and that’s often dangerous.

I just wish I could find some answers to simple questions. Does pain cause more pain? Do pain pills stop the cycle of pain? They stop pain, but what else do they do over the long run? I know they cause constipation. I had a kind of hangover from the Toradol. I know my mother got hooked on pain pills. She lived with chronic pain for over a decade.

Maybe I should have talked with the people in the ER waiting room. Some of them might know things I don’t. Susan and I have been binge-watching ER. We’re in the 14th season.

Real ERs aren’t like the TV program. The sets look similar, and the machines, but I wasn’t suffering anything dramatic, so I didn’t have a flock of doctors surrounding me. I wasn’t an interesting story. Most of the action was behind closed doors, so I couldn’t see it. I saw nurses, PAs, techs, and janitors going to and fro. I’m not sure I even saw a doctor in the hallways. Doctors were busy somewhere fixing people they could fix. I couldn’t be fixed, so I was sent home. The kid behind the curtain was waiting for surgery.

I have endless questions about my aging body. My regular doctor is very patient with me. She will answer many questions. But I don’t think I’ll ever know what I want to know. It’s not like in TV shows where things are explained so precisely.

JWH

The Limits of Learning

by James Wallace Harris, 8/18/25

I began work on the project I described in my last post (“What Should I Major in at Old Age University“) by looking through the books in my bookcases for titles that fit the project. The first one I found was Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. After reading a few pages, I wanted to hear it. I bought the audiobook. After listening to fifteen pages, I knew this book was one I wanted to study thoroughly. I purchased the Kindle edition so I could highlight the passages I wanted to remember.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph:

We all have free access to consciousness, bubbling so easily and abundantly in our minds that without hesitation or apprehension we let it be turned off every night when we go to sleep and allow it to return every morning when the alarm clock rings, at least 365 times a year, not counting naps. And yet few things about our beings are as remarkable, foundational, and seemingly mysterious as consciousness. Without consciousness—that is, a mind endowed with subjectivity—you would have no way of knowing that you exist, let alone know who you are and what you think. Had subjectivity not begun, even if very modestly at first, in living creatures far simpler than we are, memory and reasoning are not likely to have expanded in the prodigious way they did, and the evolutionary road for language and the elaborate human version of consciousness we now possess would not have been paved. Creativity would not have flourished. There would have been no song, no painting, and no literature. Love would never have been love, just sex. Friendship would have been mere cooperative convenience. Pain would never have become suffering—not a bad thing, come to think of it—but an equivocal advantage given that pleasure would not have become bliss either. Had subjectivity not made its radical appearance, there would have been no knowing and no one to take notice, and consequently there would have been no history of what creatures did through the ages, no culture at all.

Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I want to know everything Damasio is telling us. I want to remember it. I was never a good student, never good at remembering information for tests, and at age 73, my memory is like a sieve. There are both comprehensive barriers that I can’t overcome, and limitations to the knowledge I can digest and maintain.

To maximize my reading concentration, I concurrently listen to an audiobook edition while following along with the printed page with my eyes. Although Damasio’s prose set my mind on fire, I can’t paraphrase what I just read. I can vaguely say that he describes what he thinks the mind is and makes a case that feelings are an important aspect of understanding the mind. I remember that because I wondered if AIs can ever become conscious without feelings. Feelings must be tied to biology.

If I’m ever going to learn and remember what I read, I need to go beyond the momentary exposure to ideas I get through simple reading. It seems comic, or should I say tragic, or maybe ironic, or even pointless, that I’m finally getting down to developing study habits at 73.

The only way to prove you know something is to teach it. Teaching a topic requires comprehension. I feel that when reading, I do comprehend, but that’s probably a delusion. One way to explain something is to give an analogy that makes the idea understandable. Another method is to create an infographic, chart, or diagram.

Yesterday, when I set my goal to understand how my personality developed and to explain why people are delusional, I didn’t say I wanted to teach what I learned. I did write that my final proof of accomplishment is writing a thesis on what I learned. That is a kind of teaching. It makes allowances for my quick-to-forget brain.

Reading gives the illusion of “Oh, I see,” and then you forget. I need to develop a note-taking system. And I think I need to mindmap what I read. I need to knuckle down and learn Obsidian. That’s a note-taking software program that allows for hyperlinks. And other tools will help me organize and temporarily remember information so I can summarize what I learn in prose.

But I really need to amend my goal. I don’t think I can say I learned anything unless I can teach it to someone else by conversing with them. I know mansplainers are looked down on, but I’m terrible at explaining things verbally.

I can write blogs because I have all the time I need to compose and revise. I can look things up. Explaining things in a lecture, or even a conversation, involves memory and comprehension at levels I cannot muster.

I need to go beyond reading. I need to go beyond writing. For my study project, I need to get into teaching. Since I don’t want to become a boring mansplainer, I need to learn the art of the Socratic dialogue.

JWH