Invisibility is my superpower
By my reckoning, there are four stages to the end stages of your life.
Stage 1. "O but you don't look... (fill in the blanks).
This is the first sign of people noticing the march of time across the landscape of your life.
The "But you don't look..." stage is where by some stroke of good luck, great genes and good bones (or poor lighting and inebriated horny companions) or maybe its just a good manners these days when people hasten to reassure you that you don't look your age!
Like that's a bad thing? To look your age? It's not like you lay it on people like "Hi I am Blah blah and I am 60 years old" so that people are forced to think of a response. People ASK. Which is anyway a bit bloody rude now that I think about it.
So you tell them. And even though it really doesn't matter a shit you actually do hope that they will respond with the good old
-But you don't look..(forty, fifty, sixty, one-foot-in-the -grave!)
I mean did Not Looking Old stop Amy from being dead?
Does looking dead NOT disqualify Ozzy Osborn from being alive? Or Keith Richards?
But for me the meaning is deeper, a little more nuanced. By asking your age and giving these weird cryptic responses these people have indicated that they register your existence, right? You are still visible.
Stage 2 Irrelevance and Invisibility
It's important to take note of that because the next stage is irrelevance coupled with the accepted social response to that which is to render invisibility upon us. Kinda like when some one farts at Grannies tea party and everyone studiously ignores the stench. We become surplus to requirements. In the animal kingdom we would be the matriarchs being allowed to drift further and further behind the herd. Cool huh?
It happens it small ways this creeping Super Power of Invisibility. There is that day when you realise that you can no longer just stride out onto the road and cross without looking, when the reason for crossings becomes apparent. You are no longer stopping traffic and more, you were up until this point in time, totally unaware that you actually had that kind of Super Power, it's a strange and cruel double whammy and hopefully you don't learn that as I did with my leg under the front wheel of a car in a narrow cobblestone street in the ancient city of Kathmandu. (But that's another story)There is however a strange kind of liberation in becoming irrelevant. You step into it and own that shit. And you detach.
You wait at the traffic lights. Mindfully. It's a very zen stage of existence and could just lead to a spiritual journey or running away to sea. You become the observer, the witness.
Anyway you better get some pretty good mileage out of that irrelevance and invisibility gig because the next stage is like the full blown version of irrelevance (or it may be a consequence of that) it's when you become all shades of ridiculous. This can be the fading of the rose, the petals all brown and curled at the edges through lack of watering and dropping on the tablecloth.
Or it can be having hair the colour of a fire engine, bells on your ankles and be living on an island in Fiji. Or supplementing your pension and your life with a call center job in Jaipur.
The freedom that being irrelevant brings sometimes translates into full artistic expression. And because you are already irrelevant and invisible, no one even notices or gives a flying fuck about how you look or what you do. Because we Don't Matter.
Cool huh?
Now before you go and get all offended about that, just lets talk a walk on the wild side. It actually comes as a relief to me to notice my increasing invisibility in the world, I always wanted that Super Power as a kid. For me there is some kind of reckless playfulness about being invisible because after all the invisible person gets to choose when to use their Super Power.
Stage 3 Ridiculousness
Okay it's not all rose petals and artistic freedom!
There are moments when its actually a nuisance to be invisible - such as when the shop assistants are not serving you. It's not like they are ignoring you, it's just that no one has ever taught them any manners much less the concept of being of service to your fellow man or Nan.
That's when you just channel Nanny McPhee, step into that shit and own it! Like a Boss. Try tapping very sharply on the counter and blazing them with that weird Don't Fuck with The Crazy Lady kind of stare.
No matter how far our civilization extends itself there is a fear lodged deep down within our DNA of a woman with a cane, that's some serious bad-assery right there. You don't fuck with that shit.
Stage 4 Is she STILL alive stage.
Finally we get to the Is She Still Alive stage. This is the invisible ageism that exists alongside the invisible (I mean to say institutionalised) racism in our country. Let's face it folks, since the industrial age there has been fuck all use for the elderly, No one actually says Is She/He still alive, just as no one says is so and so still brown, right? But it's implied. If only they were a little more - you know, white or in a home.
It's been HOW LONG NOW? This is usually followed by a slow head shake that displays amazement and sympathy.
-She must be...how old now?(It's like Fuck man are you still looking after your mother/mother-in-law etc)
-Yeah like more than 70. (Jesus I know right? I thought it would be a little while but its turned into a life sentence)
-Wow (I mean Fuck that man! That's some gangsta gig looking after old people and knowing that's how you gunna turn out?)
-Yeah, I know right? (I know right? Shoot me)
Clearly she has begun to overstay her welcome. The only thing left is a one way ticket to the Old Age Industry. People actually make money out of our decay.
Which I happen to think is immoral. Shouldn't we be the ones getting a fricking refund?
I am surprised that there hasn't been some kind of class action taken against The Beauty Industry when it has become patently obvious they have been lying to us all along? And that we have just spent all our lives and a HUGE chunk of our wealth trying to fit into some ridiculous idea of If You Look This Way Society Will Approve of You standard. The reward being receive pats on the head and crumbs from the table.
I recently calculated that in my lifetime I have actually bankrolled the super yachts of at least three hairdressers and one manicurist.
Sometimes you just have to take life one What The Fuck at a time.