Yes, even dreams can be brought back and revised.

And sometimes the slightest change in a dream can be the difference that matters.

A few weeks back, upon the occasion of giving a workshop on cultivating truly inter-generational relationships that simultaneously account for and forget generational differences, I took another look at the Gero-Punk Dream essay I published awhile ago, suspecting it might be a keen piece to perform at the beginning of the workshop, which I was co-facilitating with two high-school students. When I composed this two-part essay a few years back, I included two references to age and life-course stage, but this time around I decided to strip away the age references altogether. I also changed some of the gero-punk graffiti artist’s mottos (Thanks for inspiring me, Ashton Applewhite!).

Here’s the result.  I quite like it.

What do you think?

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I am jogging around the city, slow and loose, fully occupying my body. I am alert and aware. I have to be–it is daytime (the angle of the sunlight suggests an early autumn afternoon). There are humans of all ages (and many dogs) doing what creatures do on a beautiful day.

So. I have an audience.

There’s a satchel slung diagonally across by back. Inside the satchel are cans of spray paint: red, black, and silver. I am tagging buildings, spans of pavement, even park benches and the sides of buses. I am leaving my mark with panache and impunity, defacing whatever surface calls out to me.

***

Life is short! Act now!

Aging: Every Body’s Doing It!

Aging is inevitable. Ageism ins’t.

You are an age, all ages, and no age at once. Embrace this mystery.

I am a gero-punk graffiti artist. Only I know that my spray paint is impermanent and will wash away when it rains.

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I am a gero-punk graffiti artist. Only I know that my spray paint is impermanent and will wash away with it rains.

There is a person striding toward me– look at them frown and fume! – as I begin to spray

AGING….

on the sidewalk in front of the playground at the park.  They ask me what I think I am doing. I respond by asking them what they think they are doing.

We look at each other, eye-to-eye, for what seems like a long time. They have really lovely eyes: We share silver hair though I have peacock-blue streaks in mine. We are about the same size and height, it seems to me, though what do I know—I always feel like I am the same size and shape, even the same age, and like I am similarly embodied, in relationship to whatever creature I happen to be observing.

Enough already. I have surfaces to deface.

I tilt my head to the right and hold up a can of silver spray paint.

They tilt their head to the left (are they mimicking me?) and hold up their splendidly ornamented walking stick.

I say: Care to come closer and take a look?

They are frozen at first. Then they shuffle side-to-side in a dance of indecision.

So I shrug my shoulders in response. I return to my work, finishing the gero-punk inscription

…EVERY BODY’S DOING IT!

My peripheral vision sucks but I feel movement and energy originating from behind me, arcing wide to home in at my right side.

I keep at my project until it is complete.

AGING: EVERY BODY’S DOING IT!

I turn to look at the stranger beside me. They are sussing. And either they have intensely bad hyperopia or they are about to kick my ass.

Left hand on my hip, can of silver spray paint in my right hand,

I ask: So? What do you think?

They say: What the hell do you know?

I say: I am not sure what the hell I know. What the hell do you know?

Then I offer them the can of red spray paint.

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Revised for the Multnomah County Library In-service day, 11/27/16, Age ain’t nothing but a number (?).