"Devouring time, blunt thou the lions paws."
           William Shakespeare, Sonnet 19

In and of itself, aging is not a bad thing. I've grown somewhat amused by the vagaries and delicate intrusions of it's practice-- fighting them all the way. I've been admonished, harshly, yet not unjustly, by my Wife, Friends and Parents to ease into the silk of what Dylan Thomas so beautifully termed, "that good night".

Yet, of course, I cannot go silently...

There is a life lived vital and there is a life lived vicariously. There are fighters and there are spectators. There is the arena and there is the sofa... I've added weight to my bench press and dropped it on my deadlift only to preserve technique. And my back... A concession, perhaps, to age, though I would prefer to think it a concession to the more mobile aspects of my physical life- not to mention the flights of stairs I climb to my studio and the hoisting of 7 foot canvases to the screws in the paint smeared wall...

I've dealt with 5 days on crutches. Five days bereft of paint, iron, or the joy of picking up my daughter. 5 hard days... A few of them hopeless.

After my Doctor examined the MRI he concluded that there were medial and lateral tears of the meniscus and that my ACL was, variously,  "...a lump of snot," and/or "gone..."

I will not strive for personal bests in the squat and deadlift, though they will haunt me-- mocking me with low weight and feeble results. But I've managed the stress of harsher demons, so I'll shed the ghosts of a bar loaded with plates and enjoy the delicacies of fast twitch fibers to earn my protein.

As a young Poet, I dreamed that I wanted to live my life as a poem. Now, as a middle-aged painter, I seem to be living life as a vigorously brushed painting- smudged, layered and perhaps a bit too heavy handed for it's own good. As an artist, I've always allowed myself to enjoy the back-roads to a painting-- the shift and questioning. the moments of utter loss and glowing joy... Romantic and perhaps nonsensical?

Yes...

But I wear those colors proudly.

As proudly as I wear my scars...