by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Blog
Growing old is constantly on my mind because I am an actress and because I am an actress there are roles, parts, characters, narratives, taken away from me for every year that I live, one day I will not be able to play a teenager anymore, one day I will be playing the role of a mother, one day I will not be playing in coming-of-age films because I will have already come of age, one day I will play a teacher because I will look like I have already lived through school and come out the other end.
John Updike’s character ‘Rabbit’ in ‘Rabbit, Run’, said ‘there’s nothing to getting old, it takes nothing’, and he’s right, I walked a few steps and I wasn’t thirteen anymore, and I walked a few steps further and my brother got married and my sister fell in love. It takes nothing.
I am still very young. But I think often about growing old. I saw ‘The Straight Story’ (1999, Dir. David Lynch, see our memoriams to David Lynch here and also here) last night, and that was a film about growing old. The protagonist, Alvin, is an old man, unable to stand without the aid of two walking sticks. He decides to take a trip to see his estranged brother, who has recently suffered a stroke, and because Alvin cannot drive, he comes up with the idea of completing the trip over several months on a small green lawnmower with a trailer attached to the back of it.
‘The Straight Story’ is a charming movie, it is. Sentimental but without sentimentality, this is the touch of David Lynch; where there could have been Hollywood tears and trumpets, there is silence and folk music. There is a scene where a young cyclist asks Alvin what is good about growing old, and Alvin says that he can’t think of anything good about not being able to walk and losing his sight, and then he says something about how the worst part of growing old is remembering being young.
My parents are growing older. They are not old, though they could be if they lived their lives a different way. It’s like that sometimes, sometimes people get old because they decide to, it’s a decision after all, and one can be stubborn enough to refuse getting old. My Mamie is like this, my mother’s mother, I spoke to her on the phone only last week, she’d just been to dance class and then to pilates, and she was going to the cinema later on, she’s sleek as a cat, French Jane Fonda, always keeps her back straight stomach in, only thing is she gets tired sometimes, can’t help that, living is a tiring thing, can’t imagine how a body keeps at it for so long, repairing and renewing, we go to sleep but it keeps ticking, I often wonder why, it feels like such compassion, so tender and kind that the body forges on.
I see things that make me think about growing old a bit less, or a bit more but in a good way, like Naomi Watts, fourteen years it took her till David Lynch saw something good and took her on, fourteen years of strife till Mulholland Drive, then Hollywood took her in, up, big wings they put on her, soaring she went, and I’m happy for her, I love her dearly, takes a whole lot of character to keep at it, thirty-two she was when Mulholland Drive hit her in the heart and teeth, still looked like a doll, course she did! thirty-two isn’t old! it just sounds mighty old because in Hollywood they tell you it is, they’ve just made it out that way, and it makes me sad, I got actress friends in their thirties and I’ve seen how they’ve panicked about it, how the word ‘thirty’ got a nasty ring about it, something like failure, makes you frantic as a dog, babies too, career and babies, babies and career, pick one.
We’re all insecure at my age, try not to be but you got a bug in you that’s a fucker to shake loose, crawls up in your head and tells you that you’re not gonna get the role because they’re prettier than you. I had that when I went for my audition for the feature film I’m in, that’s yet to be released; there was this girl next to me, real skinny doll face, I smiled at her and wished her luck, God bless her, but then I felt sick and went to the bathroom and I felt so ugly, felt like the ugliest girl alive, Jesus. But then I got the role, doesn’t really matter, if you got something then they’ll take you, looks are half the battle, still gotta have the other half, at least most of the time, Lord knows I’ve seen a pretty face do a hatchet job on a movie.
You get a bit less insecure when you grow up, I’ve heard that, seen it too. Older women always look so good to me, I never looked much at girls my age, something in a woman that’s lived a bit feels like cool breeze nothing to prove, and that’s beautiful. You know, I fell in love with one of my teachers at college, she was older, she had bright red fiery hair, lovely big mouth, and she wore red lipstick and she liked Zadie Smith and I read ‘On Beauty’ by Zadie Smith just so I could talk to her about it because I wanted to impress her, I wanted to make her think I was clever and cool, I did a lot to get her attention, not all good stuff either, I was a psycho really, I regret a lot of it. She was in her forties, I think. When she taught the lessons she had this thing about her that got all the class going, all the boys liked her too, I know it, all this knowledge, she spoke like she knew it all, and she probably did too, sort of, at least about books anyway. Can’t get that sort of thing in someone my age, doesn’t exist yet, you try but you haven’t got enough knives in your heart from years gone by, might have had some pain, but you don’t know what the years do to you, they make you wise if you let them, can’t be wise at my age, it’d be a joke, or maybe you could but it’d have to be posthumously, like Wilfred Owens or Raymond Radiguet or Amy Winehouse.
My mother is growing older, she’s not old though, but she’s got this wise thing all inside her, sometimes in a room of people talking over each other she don’t say a thing because she knows she doesn’t need to, she just listens, she’s got nothing to prove. Don’t think I’ve ever heard her shout either, not really, she’s calm as a cat, she just watches, and when she holds you she smells like lemons and when she smiles you know she’s really smiling because it’s deep in her eyes, you’ll see it if you meet her, her eyes sparkle like tears just kissed them.
But then she’s still like a little girl, my mother, that’s what I’ve realised, that’s what gets to me, how do you mix them together, head and heart of a kid and body that hurts when you get up from sitting down, it’s like our bodies can’t keep up with our brains. My mother is still like a little girl, she stills plays like one, when she wants something she does a little voice, when she hears a bit of gossip she gets that glint that’s like a bird cocking its head, and she loves the movies just like I love the movies, and she likes the foam on the top of a hot chocolate, and she likes French pop music, sometimes she dances around the kitchen, sometimes she sings even though she doesn’t know the words, and she’s like a little girl because she doesn’t know she’s a real beauty, lips and necks and waist and all, she’s like sunlight, the best is when she’s with her friends, the friends she’s had since she was tiny, they’re a sight to see, three girls about town. But when she moves sometimes I see that she’s got that thing about her, something like walking on through the valley of death after the tears have stopped, something like weariness but more like peace.
I think about growing old, but I am less frightened of it now that I see how old age can burn and rave at close of day, no need to go quietly, there’s a method to it, something like letting go, something about enjoying watching it go by, something like what I read in ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’ (Shunryu Suzuki, 1970), in the tribute that Suzuki-roshi’s student, Trudy Dixon, wrote about her teacher, something about how Suzuki’s quality of life was extraodinary: ‘buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, serenity, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion. His whole being testifies what it means to live in the reality of the present.’
Do you know what I am saying? I am saying that a cat lying on a pillow with its eyes closed is a wonderful thing, it is as wonderful to me now as it was when I was eight years old, and it will be wonderful to me too when I am eighty years old. I am saying that it is all just everyday life. I am saying that growing older is fine, there are worse things, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear all night, that’s not good at all.
I am saying…I’m not sure what I’m saying. But maybe you’ll understand anyway.
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The Carl Kruse Blog homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include Otherworld vs Underworld, VE Day, and A Quick Peek At London.
You can also find Carl Kruse at the Ivy Circle.