I am in the hot tub at Hollyhock. The gently swirling water lifts my breasts pleasantly and suddenly i remember – ah ha! – they used to do that all by themselves. Time passes.

I often feel caught in some odd eddy of time’s current. Due mostly (I believe) to 47 years of self-propelled living – of dancing and biking and following my meandering path – I am healthy and strong. All my parts still work, and I don’t really know what it means to feel “old” – I feel more of a child, more curious and sensuous and wide-eyed in wonder, every day. And then also, maybe because I am a micronaut or have those genes or have just never learned how to act like a grown-up, I am usually taken to be ten or 20 years younger than my numbers. I guess that is a gift, and I am grateful to have it – although I often encounter the disrespect or dismissal that people direct at the young, and it is as tedious and annoying as it is flattering.

Still and all…I may look “young” but of course I am aging, as are we all, surfing together on the same wave of time. Moving moment by moment closer to death, not even a single one of us getting any younger. Gravity has my number. My skin sags in new places, and the spots and pits that used to vanish quickly now linger on and become part of the landscape. My left foot is forever tender, my right ankle always creaks. My knees tell me that my days of running, of losing myself in the rhythm of my flying feet, are gone. My right hip has been sore for months – my hip, how geriatric is that! I can’t see so well – nothing new there – but lately I notice that I can only read the labels when I take my glasses off. My teeth are in trouble. And my breasts, well…there is always the hot tub, to buoy them up.

But dammit, my heart beats strong and my lungs fill with air, and I am alive, alive, alive.