Letting it Happen

Can I really be 52 years old? It doesn't seem possible to me to be at an age that I considered as a child, even as a young adult, to be so old. I wince at the thought of how I projected my idea of someone as being old on others as recently as last year....I don't feel any different than I did at 32 , or 28. Now I know that even my mother and her sisters in their 70's and 80's feel that way too. Our bodies age but our spirits continue to renew and transform.

Has the counter-culture generation decided to age differently, to redefine aging? Probably so, it has redefined everything else. I am encouraged and excited to see alternatively minded communities forming for aging hippies, baby-boomers, particularly artists who haven't got much of a retirement plan in place....who, "if it felt good, did it"

The mother of invention is leading people to form back to the land, communal type, living arrangements. Shared land, studios, gardens, meals, yoga, exercise, swimming pools, pool halls. We are all so much better off as a community. We can do so much more when we put money, ideas, entertainment, information together. Stripped of convention, the baby boomers are going to figure it out.

I am trying out letting my hair go grey. It's a big step and I reconsider it often, but so far I'm liking it. My hair grows so quickly that I was having to recover the grey every 4 weeks. I can't afford the time or the money that it takes to go to the salon and have it done professionally and I hated how it turned out when I tried to do it myself. Unfortunately, you can't go get your hair died grey to make growing out the color easier and the other the other option to cut it all off and start over isn't much better. I'm just winging it, letting it grow out, multi-colored as it is. My inspiration are the beautiful women who I encounter everywhere I go with beautiful grey hair.

I'm inspired by Kiki Smith, top photo. Gorgeous, isn't she?......And also one of the most influential women artists in the world today. Her sculptures and prints present life, women, nature with all of it's grittiness, beauty, mess. She doesn't idealize it, she shows the truth.....the woman in her painting, sitting prettily in the garden has grass stains on her knees, mud on her elbows.

Another subject for her is art about the holy spirit, magic, spirituality, the big mystery that's so hard to pin down, yet so lovely to consider. She is known to be a big collaborator, loving to share studio/work space, working with people who know techniques that she utilizes to create her work
....and then there is this glowing, ethereal, lovely woman. This is a photograph of Betty Silverstein from the book, Wise Women: A Celebration of Their Insights, Courage, and Beauty, by the renowned photographer Joyce Tennyson. Betty is quoted in the book as saying, "People often stop me now and tell me I'm beautiful. I never had this happen when I was younger. So for me aging has, at least on the surface, made others more interested in me and who I am".
.....then there is this wild woman, an artist/designer who dies her hair yellow-orange. I can't promise that I won't go there too. I'll do whatever I feel like doing at the time. No rules of the hair color kind bind me. I have other rules: to be kind, do my best to do the right thing, keep growing, expanding, learning, creating and thinking outside of the box....big rules, no matter what color my hair is.