“To Every Thing There is a Season”

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

To Every Thing There is a Season

A Time to Blog, and a Time to Not

(with apologies to the author of Ecclesiastes)

I spent much of the last week plodding through an intermittently entertaining book by one of my favorite authors, Geoff Dyer, though in the end, I agree with many Amazon reviewers that it was not one of his best.  But it was the title that lured me to read it, The Last Days of Roger Federer. (Dyer has a penchant for clever titles. The first book of his I read years ago, he entitled Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, which was followed by Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do it.)  

As some of you may remember, I have been an ardent Fedhead for many years, and Dyer who loves to play and watch tennis has long admired the elegance of Roger Federer, probably the most beloved tennis player, and maybe the best, of all time. But Roger was eventually forced to retire several years ago because of recurrent knee injuries. And he soon will be followed to the sidelines by several of the great tennis players of this era – Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka -- leaving only the obnoxious Djokovic as the lone survivor of that quartet of tennis legends. Now it’s time for a new generation of tennis stars to shine.  To every thing there is a season.   

This week I’ve also been watching a bit of the current big tournament, which is taking place in Southern California.  I happened to catch just a little of the match of one of the legends of women’s tennis, Venus Williams, who is 43 years old, which is ancient by tennis standards. Offhand, I can’t think of any professional tennis player still on the circuit as old as she. But in recent years, it has been sad for me to watch her since she usually loses in the first round to unheralded youngsters, twenty years or more her junior. Venus can still hit the ball hard and occasionally can win a set, but her performance in this tournament was typical. She won the first set and then lost the next ten games and the match. To a quick exit once again.

It was painful for me to watch her. She moves so slowly now and takes forever to serve. She may still love to play, even if she knows she will lose, but many of her fans, like me, can only wonder when she will finally realize it’s time to put her racquet away. 

Dyer’s book does talk about Roger and other tennis players, but actually most of his book, which is really about endings, is devoted to other writers, artists, jazz musicians, etc., and how their working lives have ended. Sometimes, as with two of his heroes, Beethoven and the great English painter, J. M.V. Turner, they end at the zenith of their creative life. But mostly they don’t.  Mostly they are like Venus and sometimes, like her, don’t know when to hang ‘em up. It’s really a sad book, reading about the final days of these creative spirits. And even Dyer himself, though only in his early sixties, can see his own end coming, though he still thinks it’s “in the distance.” 

Reflecting on this book, and also thinking about the passing from the scene of most of the tennis players I have loved to watch in recent years, I began to think I should follow my own advice and not get to the point where I become an embarrassment to myself or my friends and few remaining fans.

So I’ve decided to give up the blogging life.

But I have another oddball reason for making this decision now. If I’ve counted correctly, this is the 100th blog I’ve written over the past four years. And I just have “a thing” about such round numbers. Whenever a novel ends on exactly page 400, I am thrilled. Even when reading books, I often try to stop on pages that are multiples of one hundred. It’s daffy, I know, but that’s just the way I am. So if this is my 100th blog, I think, given my numeral obsessions, it is a perfect time to stop.

But, of course, I have other reasons. For one, in the past few months, I’ve noticed that I keep making typos when I write. I’ve never been a good typist, but the kind of errors that have been cropping up in my texts are sometimes bizarre, as if my fingers have a contrary mind of their own. If it wasn’t for spellcheck, my blogs would be riddled with frequent and often weird miscues. As I’ve said, this is something recent and a bit disturbing.

For another, I know I can’t write as well as I used to. When I look at some of the books I wrote years ago, or even some of my earlier blogs, I can only mourn a certain loss in my verbal fluency. And sometimes I can’t seem to find the word or phrase I want to use and am forced to resort to my Thesaurus. And I know I’m not the only old duffer to whom this happens. It also occurs to great writers I admire, as I learned from Dyer’s book:

Hard to believe, but even [John] Updike, in his mid-seventies, confessed: “With ominous frequency, I can’t think of the right word. I know there is a word; I can visualize the exact shape it occupies in the jigsaw puzzle of the English language. But the word itself, with its precise edges and unique tint of meaning, hangs on the misty rim of consciousness.” Dyer goes on to comment:

“It’s just that the sentences lack many of the qualities that made the prose of twenty or forty years earlier such a joy to read.”

But even reading books is more difficult for me these days. One the reasons I had a hard time with Dyer’s book, aside from its small font, is that I have to wear a patch over my right eye to be able to read books now. And although I can still read with good comprehension, more and more, especially after lunch, I find that I grow drowsy and am reading the same lines over and over.  Plus, I read very slowly now. It seems to take me forever to get through a book now (unless it’s a novel, but sometimes, even then).

And there’s the life, or the half-life, of my body. I usually like to joke about all my infirmities and will continue to do that, but, really, I am not having a lot of fun dealing with my physical struggles and having to take so much time with body maintenance issues. Not only can I no longer see well, I can’t hear well either. But even worse are my increasingly weak and unstable legs. The other day, when I went out to put my garbage bin away, I slipped and fell hard to the ground. I couldn’t get up for several minutes until I managed to turn the bin on its side and hoist myself up. I was banged up and bleeding, but fortunately I didn’t break anything. I was lucky. This time. But what about next time?

I used to be able to ride my stationary bike, but when that was no longer possible, I could at least walk up and down my street. But no more. Now all I can do is pad around my house like a zombie, reminding myself, “don’t fall, Ken!” Needless to say, I can no longer travel and haven’t been able to do so for years. Now the best I can do is to wander out to my patio, once the weather warms up, to sit among my azaleas and watch the clouds drift by. If this keeps up, I will end my days as I started them 88 years ago – by crawling.

Enough. You get the picture. And please don’t think I’m trying to evoke your sympathies. I know I’m lucky still to be able to enjoy life as much as I can, and I remain grateful not only for what I can still do, but for the life I’ve been privileged to have. It’s been a good life and I have been blessed in so many ways. To feel otherwise would only be churlish and run the risk of my turning into a cantankerous old fart. No, despite everything, I am still happy.  

But entre nous, after having written so much recently about NDERs and their desire to return “home,” I have to admit that I often feel that I am just “passing the time,’ trying to keep myself entertained, while waiting for the good Lord to allow me, at long and longing last, to return home. Still “waiting to die” after all these years!

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want to end this blog by giving you the impression that I am only preoccupied with my own difficulties nowadays. I still grieve for the Palestinians suffering so many terrors and privations in Gaza, for the Israelis who died from the brutal savagery of Hamas and for the captives – those who are still alive – who are not yet free, and for the Ukrainians who seem sure to lose the war after losing so many lives already. It is a dark and dangerous time we are living in.

And of course I follow the domestic and political news, too, again with a feeling of foreboding about what it portends for our country. Those of you who have read my blogs will know where my sympathies and antipathies lie. I will just say that’s one more reason that I hope I will not live to see the results of the next election.

But, as usual, I have another peculiar reason for that, and again it has to do with my obsession with numbers.  I’ve always been fascinated by prime numbers, and some of them I have found so distasteful that I simply can’t bear them. For example, for me 79 is very bad prime. So when I was 78, I couldn’t stand the thought of turning 79, so I decided not to. I just declared I would remain 78 until I could go straight to 80. So you can imagine how I feel about the dreaded prospect of becoming 89. No way, José! If I should have the misfortune of surviving another year, it’s 90 or bust.

Finally, a word to all of you who have been reading these blogs of mine for the last several years.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Even though many people have read them, I especially want to thank those of you who have taken the time and trouble to write to me. Sometimes with just a line or two, but often with long and thoughtful commentaries, mostly appreciative ones, but sometimes with comments from readers who have taken issue with me or tried to set me straight on various matters. I have been grateful for all of them and for all of you. You have enriched and enlivened my life so much during these years, and I shall miss you. I hope you will miss me, too, but we’ve had our pleasures with each other, haven’t we, during this season of my blogging life. To every thing there is a season, and with spring training for baseball coming up soon, I guess that will have to be the kind of season I will now look forward to. Take me out to the ball game – even if’s it only on TV.