“I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse…The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.”
Well, my friends are gone and my hair is gray. I ache in the places where I used to play, and I’m crazy for love, but I’m not coming on: Also in The New Yorker, Roger Angell files a dispatch from the far side of ninety. “Here in my tenth decade, I can testify that the downside of great age is the room it provides for rotten news. Living long means enough already.”
