Celebrate your lunacy
Pray for Help

                           – Tibetan Buddhist Lojong

 

When I fell over a few months ago and broke four small bones in my foot, three words sprang instantly to mind:

“Hello old age!”

I’d been looking for my granddaughters in the children’s playground at Balmoral at the bottom of a hill and hadn’t seen the high concrete kerb separating the footpath from the road.

Nine hours later in Emergency and many specialist appointments later, I was wearing a sturdy black moon boot which came up to my knee and made it difficult to walk. I could not drive nor go to the gym nor take my daily walk around Sydney Harbour.

During those six weeks of moon boot constraint, one of my bushwalking mates sent me a photo he’d taken a few years ago of me in warrior pose at the top of some rough-hewn steps in bushland near the harbour.
He is a former fashion photographer, accustomed to photographing sleek young models, and suggested I strike that pose. At the time, we were just fooling around, having a bit of fun.

 

So when my sister Skye asked if I’d like to contribute to her exhibition On Ageing, it was this photograph, embodying the pose of a warrior, which sprang to mind because this is how I want to enter old age: as a crazy wisdom warrior  …and with a bit of help.

The work itself is really just a quick sketch which captures how I feel at the age of 74.

I’ve used oil crayons to convey my lunacy, a medium I’ve only just begun to explore. I really like the feeling of the crayons in my hand and feel I have more control with them than with a brush.

Unconsciously I was recalling the Hindu Goddess Kali who is often depicted in battle in a squatting posture, a pose which opens the hips increasing their range of motion and spaciousness.

After all those weeks lugging the moon boot around, it was a while before I could return to my regular yoga class. 

To once again be able to hold this posture was so liberating. It reminded me of Kali’s fierceness and the power and strength of feminine energy.

“How do you talk about ageing?” asked Ian Rogerson on a recent Suddenly Senior podcast which he hosts with Angela Catterns.

“We were trying to work out what to call this podcast series right from the start and many people said, oh don’t use the word Senior. But that’s really who we are and Senior’s got a certain propriety about it.”

“And now we’re senior Seniors,” Angela chimed in, laughing.

Their guest, career coach and author Joanna Maxwell, responded:

“I was on a panel a few weeks ago and somebody else on the panel said ‘I think it’s time we reclaimed the word old’. She was so passionate.

“‘Old is a fabulous word. It’s a fabulous time of life. I am old and I am an old person and I like it.  It’s not this word or that word. It’s the energy with which we inhabit them that really counts.’”

 

How old is old?

During those moon boot weeks, I’d often catch a bus to the beach. More often than not, polite youngsters would stand up to give me a seat.

Did that signal I’m old?

“But didn’t he reach three score and ten? What more can any of us hope for?” commented one of the characters attending a funeral in Claire Keegan’s novel Foster.

I remember my 94 year old mother telling me a few years ago she didn’t feel old. 

She would often quote the first 3 lines of Dylan Thomas’ poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Her fierce energy is still very apparent despite some recent mellowing.

Poet Kate Lllewellyn, who has been a close friend of my mother’s for decades, is celebrated at the exhibition in a painting by my mother entitled “Peace sits in her lap”, inspired by Kate’s poem Clouds.
From the last stanza:

The first person I ever washed was ninety.
I was seventeen. She said ‘I’m not made
of tissue paper nurse.’
Now draped in old age myself,
I trudge around like an infant
Steadying myself on stems and branches.
Serene, yet puzzled, it seems crude to ask
‘How long have I got?’
There’s nothing on earth I need,
Clouds float by
and peace sits in my lap.

 

“On Ageing” runs from April 24th – May 12th at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Pidcock Street, Camperdown Thurs- Sun 10.30am – 5pm (except Anzac Day).