A Word to the Unwise

Confessions of a grieving fool.

Illustration by Orli Auslander.

Two weeks ago, I learned that a friend of mine from many years ago – a brilliant writer, a gentle soul, a loving and devoted father – tragically drowned off the coast of Florida. He was only a few years older than me.

I was shocked, reeling, crying.

Many thoughts went through my mind in those first dark hours. I thought about Mikal’s teenage daughters and about the grief they must be experiencing; I thought about the last time he and I had spoken, how we kept meaning to get together someday; I thought about how you never know when your time is up, about how you should live every day as if it were your last, about how life is so fleeting and precious.

Of course, those were the thoughts I was proud to have.

Because they are the thoughts we are supposed to have in times of grief, or mourning, of loss. Those are the noble thoughts. But then, soon enough, an ignoble thought pops up, one we don’t really want to acknowledge at all. And mine was this:

What about the porn sites on his internet history?

I’ll come back to the porn in a moment.

• • •

Like many of you, I read the essays and interviews on Oldster looking for some insight, some hope, some promise. And I often find just that. But in the days after Mikal’s death, the essays here only made things worse.

Much worse.

Everyone seemed so fucking wise, so utterly goddamned at peace. Everyone had come to realize whatever, or learned that life something something, or finally understood that what really matters is yadda yadda.

Were they lying, I wondered?  

Were they full of shit?

Because me, I’m a mess. At fifty-three, I’m just as unwise as ever. I don’t feel like I’ve found any answers, only more inscrutable questions and questions about those new questions; I still stumble; I still fall; I still make the same foolish mistakes I always have. I still stumble about, trying to find the light.

Not Eve France, though.

Eve, in her Oldster interview, says she is finding “a dazzle a day.”

“A dazzle?” I thought, reading her.

Every day?

I would settle for a dazzle a week.

Alas, I am finding no such dazzles. I’m finding sciatica and high blood pressure and that the bags under my eyes have bags under their eyes, and it depresses me. It depresses me that it depresses me, because I should be above all that now, deeper, sager, I’m too old for these shallow exterior concerns. I should be accepting, I should be focused on the important things — I should be like Cheryl Strayed, who in her Oldster interview says she’s happy that she’s less attractive. She’s liberated herself over time from such trifling vanities. Me, I’m at Sephora, wondering if I should go with the Pycnogenol 5% or the Tranexamic Acid.

Preorder Shalom Auslander’s forthcoming memoir, out July 23rd.

But hang on, Reader — it gets worse as the subjects get wiser. And as depressing as Cheryl’s wisdom is, it pales in comparison to Elizabeth Gilbert’s. Pro tip: if despite getting older you’ve not yet reached a state of Buddha-like equanimity, I suggest you not read Elizabeth’s Oldster interview. It’s going to depress you. It’s going to make you double your Prozac. Elizabeth, “hiking in a cloud forest in Costa Rica,” is happy she had a hysterectomy. She feels young again. Can you imagine being so grounded, so positively positive, that even a health scare can’t get you down?

I cannot. The polyps in my rectum gave me no such joy. They give me worry. They give me thoughts of cancer.

Illustration by Orli Auslander.

I try to tell myself this inanity is a guy thing — that women have always been wiser than men, women have always had wider perspective than we have, that men simply don’t possess the same capacity for enlightenment as women do. But Chip Conley is a guy, and in his Oldster interview, he’s not only okay with getting older, he feels like “life began at fifty.” He’s finally “comfortable in his own skin!”

I’d be much more comfortable in someone else’s skin. In, say, Ryan Gosling’s skin.

“Love the skin you’re in!” went an old advertising slogan.

Love? I thought when I first heard it.

I’d settle for like.

I’d settle for tolerate.

Which brings me back to porn, and to Mikal, and to that ignoble thought that went through my mind when I heard of his passing:

What about the porn sites on his internet history?

Because despite being of the age when it seems so many others have found peace with themselves, when they have gained the quiet confidence that comes with age, I have not. I still feel shame, I still feel insecure – and I still worry what people will think when they see my internet browsing history after I die. I worry that after my passing, after the heartfelt condolences and tearful eulogies (I’m flattering myself, I know), my loved ones, packing away my laptop, will see the porn sites I visited and they will think, “What a sicko,” and then they will pack my bedroom closet and find the sex toys hidden there and think, “What a perv,” and then they’ll move into my office and pack my writing stuff and they’ll find all the shitty drafts of all the shitty ideas I kept meaning to throw away but never get around to and they’ll think, “What a terrible writer,” and then they’ll move into the living room and they’ll pack my books and they’ll see how many of them I never finished because I’m so lazy and they’ll think, “What a phony.”

“We should get a week,” I thought when I heard of Mikal’s passing, when I should have been busy being wise and accepting and balanced. We should get a week’s warning before our lives end, not to skydive or swim with dolphins or visit Peru, but to do a clean sweep — to delete our internet histories and to throw away our sex toys and to shred all our manuscripts and to burn all our notebooks and to go through all our unread books, one by one, and fake dog-ear them and underline bits so people will think we’ve read them.

I doubt Chip thinks these things.

I’m certain Elizabeth doesn’t.

I wish I could tell you that I learned something from all this. This death, this loss, this senseless tragedy. That I came through, as so many of the Oldsters have, wiser, calmer, more balanced.

I did not.

Thus, this.

I’ve read a galley of Shalom’s new memoir, Feh, and I loved it. His earlier memoir, Foreskin’s Lament, is also great—one of my favorite memoirs ever, which is saying a lot, as I am a complete memoir junkie. - Sari

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader. I read and I read and I read, and by my mid-twenties, it became difficult to find books that I liked. I had my favorites, but I’d read them dozens of times, and nothing new spoke to me. I spent hours in bookstores and libraries, looking for books that expressed my thoughts and feelings, with little success. Eventually I decided to just write the damned things myself.

That then is the purpose of this essay.

Sari has built a wonderful thing here at Oldster, an absolute treasure of thought and philosophy from some terrifically wise people. But of late I’ve found myself wishing for one essay, just one, by someone as unwise as me. By someone who has gotten older and no wiser. Where, I wonder, is the fifty-three-year-old fool who still doesn’t know a goddamned thing?

So here is that fool.

Me.

Hello.

My name is Shalom Auslander.

I’m fifty-three.

An old friend died recently, and I’m still a schmuck.

In one of our last conversations, Mikal told me that he had gone from thinking he was in the last act of his life, to believing that he was still only at his midpoint. I don’t know how much longer I have in this life. I don’t know where I am in the narrative arc of my inexplicable being. All I do know is that I hope that by the time my time does arrive, I hope I’ve got half the equanimity of the people Sari’s collected here. Or, at the very least, that my last thoughts aren’t about my internet history. That, at least, would be something.

Perhaps none of this sounds familiar at all. Perhaps you are wiser than I. If you aren’t, know this:

You’re not alone.

I’m as foolish as you are.

If we can’t find wisdom, we can find companionship.

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Shalom Auslander writes a newsletter called The Fetal Position. (All artwork by Orli Auslander.)