From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, poet and former academic Michael Blumenthal responds. -Sari Botton
Michael Blumenthal is the former Director of Creative Writing at Harvard and retired Professor of Law at West Virginia University. His tenth collection of poetry, Correcting the World: Poems Selected & New, 1980-2024, will be published in January and his non-fiction book, "Because They Needed Me": Rita Miljo and the Orphaned Baboons of South Africa, was published in 2016. He is also author of the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers, the short story collection The Greatest Jewish-American Lover in Hungarian History, and the Ribelow Prize-winning novel Weinstock Among the Dying.
How old are you?
74
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Yes, 38. I have felt like 38 ever since I turned 38. It is only my recent history of horrible back surgeries that has made me feel my age. I think that, for a male, 38 tends to be about as good as it gets. It sure was for me.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I always felt very young for my age. Now that I am a limping 74-year-old, I am just trying to keep up with my peers and not feel jealous about the ones who can still walk without pain. Inside, I still feel like 38, outside like 74.
What do you like about being your age?
My life is no longer dominated by my ravenous sexual appetites and hunger for women. I am calmer, slower, more patient. I am no longer plagued, or motivated, by terribly much by way of ambition. I have a sense of being able to sit back and watch the world and its events go by.
What is difficult about being your age?
The end of my sexual appetites and desires. The end of tennis and skiing. The end of looking young and sexy. The end of waking up, and walking, without pain. The sense of getting closer to the end of life. The end of being seen (except, perhaps, by those my own age) as an attractive and desirable male. The end of being viewed as terribly “relevant” by the younger world that is now in charge of things.
I am no longer plagued, or motivated, by terribly much by way of ambition. I have a sense of being able to sit back and watch the world and its events go by.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
I wasn’t told that, beginning at 60, you could be forced to have seven surgeries on your back and hips and would turn 75 with a cane, hearing aid, and constant back pain. I always assumed I would be a healthy 75-year-old, playing singles tennis twice a week and going skiing with my son in the winter. Boy, was I ever wrong about that! Life has its own plans for us, often not the ones we made.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Much more sympathy and empathy for the old and infirm. An even greater sense of irony about the world and its foibles.
Much less pleasure from sports and the outdoors. Much less by way of vitality and hunger for everything I could reach.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Indeed it has. No young woman in her right mind any longer looks at me with desire or much interest, albeit occasionally with a sympathetic smile. My inner sense of myself is still at 38, but the rest of the world seems to see me as 74.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
The publication of my Selected Poems this coming January. Perhaps, with luck, but not likely, a grandchild produced by my dear son. I wouldn’t mind having another orgasm or two before I turn 80. I’d still like to see a grizzly in Glazier National Park or, even better, a mountain gorilla in Rwanda.
I wasn’t told that, beginning at 60, you could be forced to have seven surgeries on your back and hips and would turn 75 with a cane, hearing aid, and constant back pain. I always assumed I would be a healthy 75-year-old, playing singles tennis twice a week and going skiing with my son in the winter.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
Thirty-eight. I was successful, handsome, mildly famous, in excellent shape, even starting to have a bit of wisdom about life. Would happily go back to that age if I could. Though, of course, like most people, I wouldn’t mind being that age with the wisdom I have now.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
I.F. Stone, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Carter, my friend the Jungian analyst James Hollis—they are all intensely alive in old age, some of them still rocking and rolling, others (I.F. Stone) learned Latin and ancient Greek at 80. And I have to admit that Henry Kissinger, not one of my real heroes, isn’t doing too bad at 100.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
I no longer carry a condom in my wallet (just kidding). I’m still vain as hell, still determined to be as attractive as the gods will let me be. Most important thing I’ve done is no longer to wear shoes with laces, since I can’t bend down to tie them.
No young woman in her right mind any longer looks at me with desire or much interest, albeit occasionally with a sympathetic smile.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
I refuse simply to hang out with other 75-year-olds. I refuse to be overly “dignified.”
I’m perfectly willing to be old (as if I had a choice!), but I am utterly unwilling to play dead.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
I’ve never cared less about my birthday, and I couldn’t care less now. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just one of 365 days in the year. If I make it to 90, I suppose I’ll ask my wife to bake me a cake.
“It’s Fantastic” a poem from the collection Don’t Die by Michael Blumenthal
It’s fantastic to be young and naked
and fucking on a flat stone in the Saint
Lawrence Seaway beneath the late summer sun.
It’s fantastic, to feel immortal, that there
are no dark clouds hovering, fantastic
to feel your flesh and that of your beloved
will always be firm and supple and eager
for pleasure. It’s fantastic to wake each day,
flush with desire and hormones and appetites
reaching in every direction, fantastic to live
in a world without limits, where abstinence
is sinful and the vast termite mound of possibilities
rises each day like the grapes of Tantalus,
hands reaching for them in every direction.
And it’s fantastic to be one of those chosen
for the confluence of sperm and egg, fantastic
to have defied all the odds and been uttered out
into the ambiguous universe. It’s fantastic
to be able to move your fingers over the keys
and make words, it’s fantastic that some of
those words will have meaning, fantastic
that the very same words may make someone
laugh or weep in far-off Burkina Faso.
And it’s fantastic, too, that I am no closer
to perfection now than I have ever been,
no closer to sainthood, fantastic that hypocrisy
is alive and well within me, and that I will
never be the angel others want me to be,
that this is as far as I have come,
and as far as I am capable of going.
And it’s horrible that we are all dying
and will do so in time, with or without
our loved ones there beside us. It’s horrible
that Calvino was right, and the ultimate meaning
to which all stories (and poems) aspire
has two faces: the continuity of life, and the
inevitability of death. It’s perfectly horrible,
yes, that, in a few years, I will no longer be here
looking out my window at my Hungarian backyard,
I will no longer be able to watch the nuthatches
wedge their seeds into the crevices of the trees,
no longer spend summer mornings swimming
in Lake Balaton, no longer be able to look back
upon my many follies, for my follies will be over.
But it’s also fantastic to be old, and no longer
so interested in fucking, fantastic
to arrive at the dead-end street of desire
and find that love begins there, fantastic
to be sitting on this raft in the middle
of Lake Balaton on a brilliant June morning
and to feel this fly on my arm, yes, it’s fantastic
to navigate between the shit of the gulls
and the shit of the terns to find a clean place to sit,
fantastic to be free of lust and see the world again
as you saw it emerging from the womb, and
not need to cry out for your mother or
anyone else’s, and cling to her dress, sobbing,
when she drops you off at school.
Yes, it’s fantastic to be free of all that,
free to love only the air and the nothingness ahead,
free simply to take in the stupefying beauty
of this world, the many brilliant organisms
and their incredible little mating dances
and to know that you have done
what you have done and that you will get done
what remains to be done, and that now
it is the turn of others to have their hearts broken
and frolic in the sun and hallucinate upon a bush
and picnic naked on Wellesley Island
watching the Asian fisherman troll for Northern Pike.
And it’s fantastic not to be dead yet, though
at times you’ve wished you were, it’s fantastic
to know that once upon a time it was you
fucking on that stone, and that now it’s the turn
of others, it’s all fantastic, friends, once
the pain subsides, the entire show from start
to finish, it’s fantastic to be, to have been,
to become, and still to hope there will yet be
some strange miracle by which we may all,
somehow be healed, and that, someday,
in some form, we may yet come again.
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