The looking-my-age thing reminds me of a new book I picked up at Barnes & Noble last night. Addressed to older men. Actually, older than me—late 50s, 60s, written by a 70-year-old lawyer, who got expert counsel from his 46-year-old internist. The book was about health and aging. How do we stay healthy as we get old? It seems as we look around us that it’s an inevitable downward slide beginning at about 55, maybe earlier. But the author points out that it doesn’t have to be. Really, your health if it were charted should reach a plateau and then hardly change until after 85, when it rapidly drops due to inevitable biology. That is, we should not have the many, many disabilities we blame on old age, from high blood pressure, cholesterol, extra weight, join pain, weakness, balance problems, brittle bones, loss of endurance, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, many cancers, and other things that happen primarily to older people.

In fact, this book contends the research clearly that about 70 percent of the diseases of older people we don’t have to get—ever, not even when we’re in our 70s, 80s, even 90s. We should be able to do whatever we want to pretty much throughout our lives. How?

Well, the answer is predictable. Mostly , it’s exercise. Btu the author shows that a little walking now and then isn’t enough. You have to exercise six times a week and exercise hard. Four of those times should be aerobic. The other two should be weight training. A good share of the book was devoted to planning an exercise program for life. Secondly, you have to be carful what you eat. You just can’t eat the junk food that’s all around us in the United States. Diets have to be high in vegetables, fruit and grains, low in processed foods. These two will keep us from getting fat, which is a disaster to the body. Of course, it goes without saying you don’t smoke, drink more than two a day, use drugs, and keeping your stress low is also a good idea….

The book pointed out that while you can maintain a plateau of fitness at least until age 85, you can’t maintain youthful looks. It is biology that makes us look old and wrinkled, and there’s no amount of exercise or diet that can change that. However, fit people tend to look younger at any age.

This is disappointing to hear, although I already suspected it’s true. The book says, what’s the difference if you can do anything you want to physically? The difference doesn’t mean much when you’re married, but looking as young as possible means a great deal when you’re single. We judge by looks. I’m, afraid, especially men. Furthermore, as the book laments, when men reach a certain age (probably 60), younger women look right through them as if they didn’t exist (the same happens a lot earlier for most women).

—Jan. 28, 2006, Fargo, North Dakota

Just when you think things are becoming static around here…

I had spent a bit of time visiting Renée before starting to leave the building to buy some groceries. As I was walking out I passed a peculiar sight in the parking lot—an ambulance, and behind it, a police car. Several people were milling about—students, so I asked them what was happening. “We don’t know either,” they said.

I waited a few minutes then decided to go ahead for groceries. On my way home I was jut back to my room when one of the other students topped by.

“Did you know what just happened? With the ambulance and stuff. It seems someone committed suicide.”

“Well, who was it?” I asked.

“Don’t you know? It was your neighbor. Room 316.”

I had to admit that, think as hard as I could, I could not remember anyone ever emerging from 316, or who was living there. Not particularly surprising, since I don’t really know my neighbors all that well—the only way one would happen to see them would be if one emerges at the same time.

Very little seems to be known, by anyone I’ve talked to, about the person. Not even the nationality. It seems hew was quite a recluse. So often one hears this about these kinds of people. Very peculiar, however, so close to me, here. I have reflected often that suicide, among other things, is a very selfish thing to do, because the victim inflicts the relatives with perhaps a lifetime of pain and guilt. However, I was told that that attitude is extremely calloused and lacks understanding. Perhaps. Case closed.

I’ve signed up for the ski trip to the Jura mountains Saturday. But I’m mildly concerned because today I have developed what appears to be a pre-cold-state sore throat. If I get a cold now right against the talons of the one I got over just two weeks ago, I’ll know something is definitely wrong: either climate, food, or something amiss in my own resistance. This past year has been incredible for me with colds. Since August-September, when I had that monstrous one that even gave my laryngitis, I’ve had 2 more colds, and now I might be having a third. I might be having Barb’s problem—she wrote me that she’s had a cold for months. Sounds more like an allergy, that. Perhaps that too is my problem.

This week I’ve spent a considerable amount of time studying Burgundy wine in the city library. I only wish I could afford to try some new—but I’ll no doubt have to satisfy myself being a “theoretic expert.’” On reflection I wish that, instead of spending my time here drinking any old vin ordinaire, I had tried to buy some better wines and made a more careful comparison. But, I reflect, that would have cost even more money and already I’ve spent a lot more during my time here than I had planned.

—Jan. 27, 1983, Dijon, France [I studied French at the University of Burgundy for four months from 1982-83.]

[I worked under federal grant for a rural health program from 1991-93.]

Getting nagged from Washington from the rural health office there. They want to see something, a layout, a mock-up, a blueline, some copy, whatever…. FAXed to them soonest. This is the second time they called—first they called me, I said, “yeh, yeh…,” now they called the director, Jack Geller. They said to him, “Jeff wants it like this, Jeff wants it like that, Jeff….” And who is Jeff? The director of the fed. agency. It seems that ol’ Jeff is anxious to have this new publication come out well, and have his office’s name right up there on page 1, for its funding. And why is that? “He’s ambitious,” says Jack. “He wants to be an under-secretary someday.”

So I’m to be servant to Jeff’s ambitions, and those underlings in Washington are anxious to please so they can move up with his fortunes. Sniveling sycophants! Bu I suspect this is the story of the entire Washington working while collar corps. And really—hasn’t this always been the case, from Henry 8^th’s court to Idi Amin’s henchmen to Stalin’s KGB?

But I don’t want to get caught up in that. The heck with ambition to power.

Yet I inevitably I have to at least move a couple checkers, if not play the game. The people are hot to trot in Washington, to see me hand-carrying some formal layouts. Get this: they want to ship me down to Washington in about 3 weeks just to, I suppose, mold me to their viewpoint. Your tax dollars at work, thank you.

Okay, I’ll play—in any case, I think of this job as a client, a freelance client, and I’m just working to please the client. Whatever he wants, fine by me….

“This is what you do when you’re funded on soft money,” says Jack. “If it’s the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, you play their game. If it’s the state, you play that game. If it’s the feds, you play that game.

Nobody warned me when I was hired that I was going to be paid with “soft money.”

—Jan. 23, 1992, Grand Forks, North Dakota

Went to school came home went to boy scouts.

—Jan. 17, 1966, Moorhead, Minnesota

The Soviet Union is falling apart at the seams. Lithuania demands to secede, Azerbaijan and Soviet Armenia are at nearly civil war…meanwhile, in Cambridge, all is quiet, or not, as usual….

I shopped with Chris and Patrick in London for computers, that is, word processors, Saturday, and found a fair one on special for £350+VAT (15%), so I plan to return to London this afternoon to buy it. Chris will help me carry it. Nice to have friends—what would I do about that in Paris? Meanwhile, I’m feeling guilty spending a day or two not doing my work. I always feel guilty if I don’t spend the daytime doing my “job,” whether that job be paid (watering plants or writing public relations copy) or unpaid (researching and writing for school work purposes). But I never feel drive to work nights or weekends, like some people In any case after buying this word processor, I’ll probably spend another day learning it. I only have 2 weeks until my first 15,000 words are due! Oh, well, if I’m a little late, no earth-shaking disaster.

—Jan. 15, 1990, Cambridge, England

My mother and I get on together well, and we have spirited discussions. Through speaking with her I crystallize my own ideas. Mostly I’m afraid, conversations is one-sided—I do most of the talking, admittedly. They say you don’t learn anything by talking, but that’s not necessarily true; through talking out your ideas you are better able to make solid and conscious hazy thought floating about helter-skelter. Writing does somewhat the same thing—most great writers evolved their ideas as they put them on paper, I suspect.

I told my mother of my great quandary over whether I should go back for more school, or direct my life elsewhere, back to newspapers, agency work or other. My big worry, I said, was to end up like Prof. Murray, a dusty traipsing through decades of classes, growing old in the desiccated clusters of the university pattern. She said, however, that that needn’t be the case, that I could combine teaching with time off for writing, or research or travel—and that, actually, university people have better opportunities to do that than people in other pursuits. Perhaps this is true.

Usually I guide my choices not on what would make me most happy but what would make me least discontented—because I’m never truly contented with anything. Along this line, university life would probably make me less discontented than the façade of agency work. There’s money in that, and money is not of no importance to me, I’ll admit—but, projecting my feelings 30 or 40 years in the future, would I be pleased with myself to say, “yes, I spent a life well, I made money and live among more objects.”

To look back at that kind of life would be disappointing. If we all need to try to create our own paradise here on earth—because who know what will come in the hereafter—to dedicate ourselves to objects seems not the best and brightest path. Then what is? That answer is still hazy. Perhaps there is no certain answer. But I believe there must be. It’s just that few people ever really find it. Some people, preoccupied with fixing the car, putting a new roof up, saving for that trailer, bringing up baby, throwing a party, watching the favorite TV show—some people never really look for it. It is they who are most content. Knowledge encourages discontent, I suspect. But perhaps not forever. Do wise old people find contentment? How about wise young people? There is no such thing.

—Jan. 12, 1986, Moorhead, Minnesota

Tonight I’m in a “down mood.” I’ve discussed the papers I’m to complete for May and they seem so overwhelming, yet so uninteresting. I can’t understand this. They are not that difficult—I’ve done before and I can do again. I’m sure of it. Yet I am caught by this sense of utter futility of it all. Every subject, every atomized dissection of every topic has been done—what need is there to add to this disgustingly voluminous world of published material? Who needs to write anything, anyway? There are too many writers around already. How could anyone possibly be interested in anything I could write. The only thing that has any value is a news story, good today, for a quick read, gone tomorrow.

I feel all this required writing is a waste of several months of time—it’s all a make-work project, that’s all. Just the glorified high school “copy Shakespeare’s fifth sonnet” make-work. (Did Shakespeare have a fifth sonnet?)

I’m so discouraged when I see these professors and all their knowledge about so many different fields. And languages too—they can at least speak three. Students too—it seems like that Israeli has read every book we talk about. I must be incredibly ignorant. I’m just not “intellectual stock.” I can see. This fall, I believed this “intellectual business” was the true meaning of life. Or led to it anyway. Tonight I think it’s all dross; it’s the plain old grind-’em-out reporter who holds the key.”

—Jan. 10, 1980, University of Warwick, Coventry, England

 What, I reflect, might become of me if at this very moment I were to inherit $1 million. I would have a constant income of $100,000 a year, perhaps $60,000 or more after taxes, depending on the shelter I found. What would become of me?
Work? I would see no need—and indeed, employers who know of my net worth would find no need to hire me. Trying to write, trying to read, trying to make the best of my talents? It would soon begin to seem so foolish—why bother?

Friends? At my income level, old ones would drift, new ones—and perhaps many false ones—would take their place. Those without money would resent me, perhaps detest me, for no other fact than that I was rich, just as I detest the wealthy today, for no other reason than that they are wealthy and kindle my jealousy.
I could give thousands to charity—but what is a thousand dollars to a millionaire? Nothing admirable.

I would travel—but travel without purpose, only to sight see, gets old fast.
My life would be more materially confortable than it is today, surely, but if the quality of it and the contentment it provides would be higher I gravely doubt.

And yet, we want to be rich.

—Jan. 7, 1984, Moorhead, Minnesota