by thoughts on the day
Some days my body feels old from pain and insomnia though in my mind I’m still young and beautiful.
Some days melancholia may touch me like softly fluttering wings as I remember many loved ones no longer here.
On this day and still holding true are these birthday meditations from a couple of years ago,
while a certain song from my youth has been going round and round in my head:
When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?
When I’m Sixty-Four, lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Such mixed feelings….
February 11, 2010 in Being an Artist, Music by Marja-Leena
Happy Birthday, Marja-Leena! You’ll always be young and beautiful at heart.
BTW, Dennis turns 64 in a couple of months, so I’ve thought of this song lately. McCartney reportedly wrote the song when he was 16, when 64 *seemed* really old!
There is a saying in the North of England: “God doesn’t pay his debts in money.” It is usually applied to someone you dislike and whose prior behaviour you disapproved of and to whom something nasty has just happened. It makes the assumption that God is on the side of “real” Northerners, a typical example of moral blindness that Northerners are prone to. (Just in case you’d forgotten, the North is where I come from.) However, I was reading The Guardian today and it quoted The Globe and Mail whose reporter was looking out at a tennis court in Vancouver where someone “in shorts” was playing. Cherry trees were also said to be in blossom. Perhaps it’s time for the above judgement to become better known in Canada and to be directed at your hated prime minister, given the Olympic fix he has got you into. Anyway, it doesn’t seem there’ll be much chance of snow covering up those “Phillistine” signs you painted on the parking slots at the uni.
As to being 64, why that’s mere post-adolescence. Hope you didn’t go out and get sun-stroke on your birthday. I’m never quite sure what age I am but I can find out my looking at my blog profile where the software cranks up the figure as another year passes.
The Beatles’s best line is “meeting a man from the motor trade” – a phrase that encompasses all that is shallow, unaspirational and generally unsuccessful about men in that line of business. Don’t think it would travel, though. Car salesmen aren’t held in quite such disregard on your side of the Atlantic.
Happy Birthday, Marja-Leena!
Best wishes to a fellow Aquarian!
You are always young, beautiful and so creative to me!!
Happy Birthday, Marja-Leena … and as Leslee has said it so well already, at heart you will always be young and beautiful!
Herzliche Glückwünsche, Marja-Leena! I’ve been told that as long as one has an appetite and an appetite for life, all is well. I get to raise another pint to you! Hoch soll sie leben! Drei mal hoch!
Is it your birthday?
If so Happy Birthday!
I told myself last week that I am going to act as if I am 33. Maybe that will help me to stay young? I really think that adding up our years makes us feel older than we really should
Well, I’ll let you know if it works!
Happy Birthday Marja!! May you have a an excellent one too.
Best wishes for the day (and year). If Paul McCartney is anything to go by, post-64 is not so bad at all.
But the diminishment of physical powers: Oh, it’s so hard! I saw a dear friend in London yesterday and she was complaining about old age; that it made her feel angry more than anything else.
Leslee, thank you! Wonderful to get such cheerful greetings to chase away the slight melancholy I’ve been feeling as this birthday was creeping up.
BB, thanks for the tale and the wishes! It’s no longer tennis weather here with the rain, but I think it may be cool enough to give Cypress Mountain some much needed snow. I’ve nothing nice to say about Harper, nor Campbell our province’s premier who got us into this deep financial burden. As for car salesmen, they often became the nastiest politicians here. Enough of that, I’m going to enjoy my birthday with a nice dinner out at a cozy seaside cafe far way from Vancouver’s madding Olympic crowds!
Katja, kiitos, thank you so much!
Maria, and thank you too! I’m lucky to be alive, right!?
R, all is too well with my appetite for food, and most of the time for life too! Your wonderful wishes give me great pleasure, my dear!
Mouse, that’s what I have to tell myself, that I need to act as if I’m 30 years younger! We mustn’t look at the calendar. Thank you for your wishes.
Cathy, thanks! All these greetings on the blog, in emails, and on the answering machine greeted me when I came home – how wonderful!
Bee, thanks, and how true about Paul. I think we just have to enjoy each day to its fullest for none of us know how long we will live to enjoy it.
hope your birthday is special and you have many more years years of being the special you that you are.
I wish you could of hearf Veijo Holopainen sing this beatles tune in Finnish, but his version. He was the smash hit at the retirement function for one of our local Finnish Canadian professors when he sung his quirky Savo Finnish version of When I’m 64.
hugs from the center of Canada,
Taina
I’m a bit late, but Happy Birthday from me, too! Younger people like to tell older people that they have to have a better attitude, but until you’ve tried it you can’t know what you are saying. I’m not in my 60’s yet, but this year I turn 50 and time is beginning to tell. Ailments that never used to bother me come on more frequently. When I get tired I stay tired longer. It takes a bit more motivation to get off the chair and head out into that cold rain for a run. It’s almost as if gravity gets heavier as time rolls on.
But you haven’t lost your ability to love and enjoy the world. And that is important. Your photographs show clearly what the world and life mean to you!
This was so beautiful. Hope you had a lovely day, Marja-Leena.
Taina, thank you! I do wish I could hear that Savo version, sounds like fun! Hugs much appreciated and returned.
Butuki, you have said it right! Gravity and all. Thanks for your words and for your friendship. Hope all is well with you.
Jean, thank you and yes, it was a lovely day.
Late to the party, banging on the door……
Happy Birthday to you. Here is a virtual bottle of good Australian red wine for you. Cheers!
Belated birthday greetings! Like Barrett, I consider 64 to be impossibly young. Oh to be 64 again! In the U.S., of course, we look forward to age 65, when we become eligible for Medicare!
herhimnbryn, thanks for the wishes and the Aussie wine!
Hattie, thanks to you too! You are still young, an inspiration!
The wisdom and foresight of those two young song writers is formidable. Perhaps we’re all braver about the exigencies of age when youth and energy really are in full bloom. Simon and Garfunkle were another pair who were inspired. My particular favorite of theirs was ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.
Happy Birthday, Marja-Leena.
Susan, thank you! Simon and Garfunkle were favourites of mine, more so than The Beatles actually.