The Gero-Punk Project

To be a Gero-Punk is to live experimentally, to live in love with emergence, with the unexpected, the chaotic, the improvisatory, to live with your arms wide open to complexity, guided by your own star, fueled by a good measure of playfulness and well-intentioned rebellion.

To be a Gero-Punk is to bravely and critically reflect upon, interrogate, and create new ways of thinking about and experiencing the aging journey.  A Gero-Punk resists normative aging ideology, and challenges others to do so as well, or at least to better understand the implications of normative aging ideology before they live by its rules. We resist simple states of consciousness about aging and later life and choose, instead, to dwell in the messiness, the undeniable complexity, of deep human development and aging.

To be a Gero-Punk is to explore the art of time-travel, to learn how to be grounded simultaneously in the present while respecting (and learning from) the past and dreaming the future.

Gero-Punk “self-care” isn’t about perfecting one’s self or trying to prevent becoming old. If Gero-Punk “self-care” is anything, it has to be about freedom, about discovering what works for each of us in terms of feeling good, doing good, and enjoying this precious human life.

Here’s part two in the series of reflections and take-aways from the Gero-Punk Salon on Self-Care. This one – a Gero-Punk Poem — is by another regular contributor to this blog, Melinda E. Pittman. Poems are meant to be read aloud — see what happens when you do.

—Jenny Sasser, with Dana Rae Parker

 

Westminster Quarters Calling

A Community Inquiry in Four Crochets

A Poem inspired by the glorious Gero-Punk conversation on Self-Care, 2/21/16

By

Melinda E. Pittman

 1)

The doorbell of mindfulness chimes in.

Is it a present? Or a tautly taped box intent for future Tense?

A care package awaiting Time.

 

Ask… Is it Present time now or later?

Momentous thought, that.

Standards shift and sway ‘shoulds.’

Dust-frosted cobwebs

cleared for Arachne’s weft.

Re- membering the tale: be Aware who knocks upon the door.

 

2)

Is it Time to burnish base-boards? To order Chaos around?

Basis un-bored. Un-wholly. Desire, relief refrigerated.

Sky-light the limits.

 

Sandwiches- gratitude stuffed and mustard spiced- for just the right Present when Now arrives Later.

 

Now and Then, there be shoulds to sing to sleep,

perchance to dream…

A nice belly-rub for a little dog-

Tired day.

Present? NOW?

 

3)

Hummmmm

Would that we may make requirements wait another nanosecond!

After all, every good laugh requires set-up and twist

and

Timing.

The punchline’s liminal. Would that it might conform to the irrealis left.

The joke’s in you.

Gigs of giggles delivered to your door. How’re your humours?

 

4)

Now… then.

Shall we/I/they/thee/ye sign for the package

with full formality and care

or merely an initial chuckle?

 

How to accept a Moment of Delivery

as Westminster’s Quarters chime?

~ From Poems Aloud (work in progress)

Melinda E. Pittman is an essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, composer, musician, singer, theatrical director, producer, stand-up and sit-down comic, and community activist. She performed with the infamous parody comic quartet, the Fallen Angel Choir, then founded and toured the original comic musical theatre company BroadArts Theatre, serving as their Artistic Director for 14 years. Author of 15 full length musical plays, her work WonderBroads won the Angus Bowmer Oregon Book Award for Best Drama in 2000. She earned her B.A. in Theatre from Virginia Tech in 1975 and her Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies from Marylhurst University in 2013.

 

As Gero-Punks, we ask (and ask again, and again): What capacities for self-care and intentional aging do we want to develop so that we can live vibrant and meaningful lives, no matter what challenges we might face as we continue our travels through the life-course?

Not surprisingly, there are other important questions nested in this question which might be of great benefit for us to individually contemplate and collaboratively inquire about.

Questions such as:

• What the hell does “self-care” even mean? How are we conceptualizing it?
• What messages do we consume and internalize around what “self-care” entails? Where do these messages come from and are the mainstream, dominant definitions of “self-care” relevant to our daily lived experiences?
• What does self-care cost us (in money, time, energy, etc.,) and what is the focus or intent of what we label “self-care” activities? (Is the underlying motivation to remain “young,” to prevent or manage chronic illness, to reduce stress, to increase well-being, to deepen our spiritual practice, to transcend our messy embodiment, or perhaps to stave off our inevitable demise as long as possible? Do we even understand why we do or don’t do what we do or don’t do?)
• What might a Gero-Punk practice of self- (and other-) care look like?

Well, that’s just a few of the juicy under-the-surface questions we – 18 of us! — played with at the Gero-Punk Salon that took place this past Sunday, February 21, 2016.

Starting today and over the next few days, we’ll be sharing reflections and “take-aways” offered by several of the fine folk who participated in the Salon. To get this series of Gero-Punk Praxis pieces underway, please welcome regular Gero-Punk Project contributor, Erica Wells.

–Jenny Sasser, with Dana Rae Parker

+++

Reflections and More Questions

By Erica Wells

Taking time to pause and ponder the notion of self-care while listening to the questions and struggles others face in enacting self-care, I came away with a desire to get this self-care thing going in my life. To bring it up to the level of day-to-day awareness, not something I scramble for when I’m too burned out to try something new, or return to something trusted and true. The conversation reminded me of how much better I feel when my actions line up with my heart’s desire; in other words, when I am living intentionally.

So today: less lip service, more action! I promise myself I will do the things I know will make me feel better. Then, I don’t follow through. I have a rebellious nature that resists these forms of regulating behavior, so the larger question I should be asking is why make rules I know I will break? Why set myself up to not be able to rely upon myself?

Speaking of promises to myself: for a long time, I got too used to being busy, and not having time for anything but the jobs/commitments/obligations that were stuck in front of me. I allowed myself to be outer-directed and I ignored any inner direction I might have followed. I was busy being all things to others instead of being true to myself, even though I made it seem like being myself was meeting all of those expectations. And maybe it was, for a while. Now a lot of those commitments are fulfilled and my responsibilities to the outside world are fewer and less fierce.

So the pendulum has swung and I should be paying attention to that inner direction. But when was the last time I felt right in my own skin? When I felt really good about myself? When I felt well, and whole and healthy and intentional about my life. I hate writing these sentences because I do not have the answers for them. Why do I care so much about having answers, I wonder?

I will make an effort to get comfortable with these questions: to use them as a guide toward self-care practices that bring serenity to a chaotic mind, that bring calm to a harried household of adults, kids and pets, and provide nourishment to an aging body careening through the life course on a joyous, reckless and unpredictable path.

Erica is a gero-punk housewife living in Portland, Oregon. Her husband, dog, cat and children monopolize all of her free time and she is quietly plotting rebellion. Or at least a proper cocktail hour.

I just realized that it’s that time again. Actually, it is well past that time again. But as I always like to sing: Better late than never; no time like the present; sooner rather than later; life is short, act now!

What time is it? It is time for a Gero-Punk public service announcement!

But first, let me say a few words to those of you residing both far away and close by who have recently come around to see what we are up to here at the Gero-Punk Project: Hey there, welcome, and thank you for your curiosity and interest! In the past week we’ve gathered new readers from New York and Massachusetts, not to mention far-flung global environs (Norway and India, to be specific), as well as a really brilliant woman I sat next to on my flight to the east coast the week before last (hello, Betsy!).

If there is one theme for my life during the first quarter of 2016, the theme has something to do with going to new places and meeting new people and having new adventures. In addition to this blog, where I publish my own and others’ gero-punk essays (for more on what “gero-punk” means, see below), the Gero-Punk Project involves life-wide and wide-spread praxis in the form of local (Portland, Oregon area) Salons and other anarchic educational happenings, as well as workshops, presentations, and conversations around North America (and, hopefully, other locations on this awesome planet). Between now and April, I’ll be journeying to California, Missouri, Maryland and Southern Oregon to do offer some gero-punk perspectives on our travels through the life-course.

Maybe I’ll see you?

+++

Perhaps you are feeling a bit confused about what this “gero-punk thing” is. Perhaps you need to know a bit more about what’s what before you’ll feel willing to venture further.

That’s understandable. How about I say more?

The Gero-Punk Project provides a venue for telling and sharing stories about our travels through the life-course. Together we create a space for trying out alternative ways of experiencing and writing about time/space/place, about age and aging, and about the complexities of being human beings, creatures who are aware of the passage of time and how time has its way with us.

We take seriously the idea that we are time-travelers: a particular age, all ages, and no age at all. We give voice to our flummoxing, fascinating, mundane and profound, odd and perhaps transgressive thoughts, feelings, and experiences related to this grand and strange adventure of being and becoming human in and through and outside of time.

We legitimize confusion, uncertainty, and vulnerability, states of no-sense. As well, we harness our inner authority, our sovereignty, our growing expertise about our own inside experiences and our curiosity about the inside experiences of others.

We ask questions such as:

Where does age reside?

What does it feel like to be the embodied creatures we are right now in this present moment? (And what might it feel like to be a differently embodied creature?)

What assumptions are we holding about what a particular age should be like, or look like, and where did these assumptions come from? (And are we served well by these assumptions or do we want to blow them up and create something new?)

How might our confusions, mishaps and missteps as we muddle through this life be sources of learning and wisdom, for ourselves and, by sharing them, for others?

(And for those of us who are formally engaged in the work of gerontology) We ask to what extent do we see our aging experiences reflected in the official Gerontological theory and research? And to what extent are our aging experiences and our capacities to support others with their aging experiences informed by Gerontological theory and research? What are the connections and disconnections? What is missing and what might we add? What new questions might we ask?

As well, we ask: What capacities for self-care and intentional aging do we want to develop so that we can live vibrant and purposeful lives, no matter what challenges we might face as we continue our travels through the life-course?

Also this: What are the ways in which we might be of service to others, to the larger community, and to the world that allow us to enact our deepest longings and commitments, help us grow in all directions as human beings as we continue to ripen?

And perhaps most important of all, we ask: If we had play-dates with our 8-year-old selves, what would we do? If we invited our future older selves over for a glass of wine, what would we talk about?

Will you play with us?