Turn around, more than half a decade evaporates. 70?71?727374 75 76 77? It doesn’t feel so old. I’m told that it is but it doesn’t feel that old. At the same time, I confess I’m not exactly sure who this geezer is who shows up in the mirror every morning — or where he came from. The thing is he keeps writing notes like this and leaving them where I can’t help finding them:
In my extreme age —
In my age extreme —
Skin planed to glassine,
Bone buffed to crystal,
Light locked in the marrow,
And memory melded to images only…
Of my extreme age —
In my age extreme
In my extreme age —
In my age extreme —
Thoughts thinned to one
And dreams dimmed to soul;
To that one shred of thread
Which stitches the shroud
Of my extreme age —
In my age extreme.
In that age extreme,
That extreme edge of age,
There shall still
In such stillness
Ring in my ears
One echo of now;
Of my extreme age —
In my age extreme.
In our age extreme
Your echo shall glimmer
Ever on the river that streams
Through time’s silted canyons
Of my extreme age —
In my age extreme.
Of our extreme age —
In our age extreme.
— Vanderleun for Emma Jean.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Many, many, many more. Happy Birthday, Gerard.
Happy birthday Gerard! And I wish you many more!
You have three weeks on me, Gerard, however, I prefer to think of it as forty-something. It just happens to be forty-thirty-two.
It’s those Damned Chinese mirrors being snuck into our bathrooms, replacing the American-made mirrors that show us how we really are!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
“How terribly strange to be seventeeeeeee…two”
You’ve caught up at last; with any luck I’ll surpass you again in four months.
Congratulations, old man, and many happy returns of the day, whatever that means.
Gerard, you keep brightening in the Light.
We all wish you to keep on keeping on.
Be thankful: You still got the body of a 71 year old.
Happy Birthday! I’m not far behind you. Thank you for your wise and occasionally snarky rhetoric….keeps me thinking and laughing.
Has it already been a whole year? Happy, happy Mr V!
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Getting old beats the alternative,
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birfday GV. We’re all pushing it.
Happy birthday Gerard, I hit 70 a month ago. It’s a little strange.
Happy Birthday Gerard! Something wonderful indeed… Here’s to many more, buoyed by your enthusiastic readers.
Happy birthday, Gerard. May you be blessed beyond all reasoning in the coming year.
A tip, Gerard. When I hit 69 I started counting backwards.
I’m 64 now and feeling a helluva lot better. Cheers anyway!
Fortunately, you’ve chosen your parents wisely. I wish you many more happy returns of the day!
Happy birthday to you….
I don’t care what they say, you don’t look a day over 70.
But then, I stopped caring about age about 20 years ago.
Except to just stay away from people that appear to be 40 or less due to inherent incompatibility.
….and many more!
I’m right there with you brother.
Strange days, and, who is that old man in the mirror?
Happy Birthday Gerard!
Happy Birthday, sir. I’m older than you . . . . and always will be. And you’re still the best writer in America. Come north and visit some day and we’ll have a blast!
Hey, happy birthday and all the requisite sentimental folderol.
Happy Birthday. Here’s to many, many more!!
Happy Birthday.
Nice words.
Have a happy happy!!
Happy birthday sir! I wish you many more years to continue your writing! Thank you!
In my extreme age…
At 79 I still read and laugh
At that young whippersnapper
Vanderleun.
72! Never!
I myself look forward to the 29th Anniversary of my 39th Birthday.
But Happy Birthday anyway Gerald!
Have a good one kid. I was a shiftless 14 year-old when you came along.
I will be 19 this January and wish you a sincere Happy Birthday. My suggestion is to just start over with the age thing when you turned 50 (that’s what I did). So you are 22, correct?
Happy birthday, Gerard! I will drink a toast to you of whatever Keith Richards is drinking. We should both be around for another hundred years or so.
Happy birthday, Gerard. At this point in the game every day is a gift.
JWM
Wishing you the Happiest of Birthdays……..
I always think that each day that one awakens not looking UP at the sod is an accomplishment and a gift from GOD.
May you have many more such days!
Your age is not extreme until you’re dead. Hang in there!
Happy Birthday Gerard. You and I are of equal age again.
Rejoice! You still have the body of a 72 year old.
Age-old problem, unchanged since we shared an evening meal in Seattle several years ago. You look no different than you did then, and you have spent some time among the dead since then. Thank you for your return to our precincts and your writings here. Enjoy your remaining days which, although many, are meant to be limited by He Who Makes the Rules.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
“How terribly strange to be seventeeeeeee…three”
Wait, what? I might have sent the same sentiment last year about this time. Of course you were much younger then (than now).
Okay, I’m done talking to you in songs.
So you’ve got six months on me! Good to know that your words are well-seasoned: with age comes wisdom, and a young whippersnapper like myself needs to hear from someone of an age.
When my daughter turned 40, she told me that 40 is “the new 30.” So with that yardstick, we’re just entering early middle age!
Many happy returns Gerard, and all the best to your Mum!
Well, I just turned 60, but according to one of those health machines in the local pharmacy, I’ve got the health of a 73 yr old.
Happy birthday and many more to come.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Poetry is hard
Happy birthday anyway
here’s the secret:You want to get older, you just don’t want to get old. lengthen your telomeres
Old myass. You are 10.42 years in Olive units. I figure you have
another 6-7 lives left as well.
Happy BDay!
Happy birthday!
Well, you look pretty good for an old geezer. Happy Birthday and I sure do enjoy your writings.
Happy Birthday! I wish you many more.
Happy BD dude. Enjoy.
No, the seventies are not an extreme age! My own mother is 85! My grandma passed on at age 99.75. Besides, I’m getting the impression that longevity might well be somewhere in your genes…
Happy Birthday, Gerard!
“Ve Git Too Soon Oldt Und Too Late Schmart”
I’ve still miles to go on the last half of that equation.
Congrats, man.
Thanks for all you do (and have done).
Sincerely,
CA
Happy Birthday, belated. I didn’t realize it had been a few days since last I rolled by.
Got some Gerard reading to do.
From one member of the Christmas season birthday club to another, I hope you enjoy this one, and many more to come.
From one member of the Christmas season birthday club to another, I hope you enjoy this one, and many more to come.
Happiest of Birthdays to you Sir!
Happy Birthday, Gerard!
Happy Birthday!
I’ve got a few months before I enter the seventies, but at least this year I didn’t arrive late to this party.
Happy Birthday Gerard. You have me beat by 4 days and 4 years and feel just as you do. You have alot more hair than I do. It’s why I wear a hat.
Glad that we can all wish you another happy birthday.
Grateful that we’re all here to do it.
JWM
Happy birthday, and glad we’re all still here for another trip around the Sun.
How good it is to be able to wish you a happy birthday again!
Happy Birthday and wishes for many, many more!
Happy birthday Gerard!
Gerard, another year older and deeper in somethingorother.
Enjoy!
Most all doctors agree 85 is OLD, so
you got a ways to go. God Bless
Warmest wishes for a happy birthday, Gerard! Given the clamor and tumult of the past sixteen months, may your next sixteen years be calm, happy, and filled with love.
…and a happy St. Stephen’s Day, as well. Keep on spinning that curious sense of your own!
Holy Crap, where did they go, I will be 75 years old in 2020, one more decade under the belt and I talk to my older brother who is 85 and he has the same problem. Truth is we have all had a lot of bumps and bruises but here we are, one more freaking New Year.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR!!!! I look forward to many more years of your writing.
It is possible that you might be the inspiration for Ezekiel Emmanuel’s desire to off us old people at age 75.
Happy birthday and Merry Christmas. 75 is the new 40.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GERARD!!!
Happy 45th anniversary of your 30th birthday! Have a god one.
P.S. My favorite Indiana Jones quote: “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.”
Happy Birthday wishes, Gerard. I love Andrew R’s typo,
a perfect gift on your special day.
Happy Birthday Gerard! Thank you for sharing The Best Blog Ever with us all 🙂
Today is something wonderful indeed.
Have read you for many years. 75 is not old. You look wonderful “at your age.” Let us hope for more years!!!
And one more year…
Thank you once again for the light you provide in this darkest of seasons.
Happy Birthday.
Keep gettin’ older.
JWM
I have enjoyed your blog every day for well over a decade. Happy birthday…….may you continue forever.
Happy Birthday! I’ve finally joined you in the Select Seventies, not everyone is privileged to enter that club. My late dear wife did not. None of our cats, not surprisingly. BTW how old is Miss Olive?
“you’re only as old as the woman you feel.”
groucho marx
Happy birthday Gerard. I ain’t too far behind you. One thing I figured out this year is what the hell can they do to me at this stage of life? Might as well go all in to mock, ridicule and resist these filthy leftist bastards.
Happy 75th Gerard ! Stay well for us, you are a key to our sanity. And a great friend !
Best wishes on your birthday! Prayers for blessing this Christmas and New Year season! Gratitude for the joys and insights you have given me and many others over the years — may there be many many more to come.
P.S. We celebrate our wedding anniversary today – 39 years, pretty old for a marriage these days, and amazing how we never quite spun apart at several particular junctions in our journey. The Lord wills it, is all i can figure.
Happy 75th, G!
I got two years on ya, and all I can say is, my memory ain’t what it never was…as best I can remember…
Love from Texas
Happy Biethday, Gerard, I’m not far behind you.
I tell my Doctor…..’If I only knew I’d live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself”.
De Oppresao Liber!
Happy Birthday!
MISSION CONTROL: “You have a GO for orbit number seven-six. Copy?”
Hey Gerard,
I’m not calling you “senile” or anything, but are you absolutely SURE you’re 72?
Because the photo above looks like some dude in his mid 50’s.
Have a great birthday, brother. Enjoy it to the fullest.
ditto! . . . one through eighty eight.
Happy Birthday, Gerard !
For me, it’s even worse when I realize that 3 weeks ago, I turned three quarters of a CENTURY of age…..
Repeating what I said in 2017, with only the age changed to rub it in more;
In my extreme age…
At 82 I still read and laugh
At that young whippersnapper
Vanderleun.
Happy birthday! And keep em coming!
Happy birthday, Gerald! Thank you for providing a refuge from all the crazy out there.
Roses are red
Decent people are cool
Getting old sucks
All the best to cool you.
And many more.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
Finding your blog has been a blessing for me as it probably is for so many.
Happy Birthday, Gerard. I’m only 11 years behind you…
Happy, Happy Birthday!
Keep on Truckin’, Gerard. That’s me behind you, pushin’ ya up the hill!
I want to be just like you when I grow up!
Continued good wishes.
Live forever O Bard! Happy 75th birthday!
Happy birthday, whippersnapper.
Accept the changes coming, for they will. Accommodate, not acquiesce.
Every day on this side of the grass is another opportunity. I know you will grasp them.
Happy Birthday Gerard!
You are consistently fascinating and I love the ka-ching postings too. Happy Birthday, you lovely man.
Happy Birthday! I’m wishing to you a healthy and happy year. 🎉
Happy birthday. Thanks for the great content all these years. Don’t retire from this.
Gerard,
You have nearly a quarter century on me and you have many weird and wonderful stories to share with all of us. May you keep going and sharing those stories with all of us, and meet new people and friends and make more new stories.
“No man is lost if he can share a drink, a story, and a laugh with people.”
You look pretty good for an old guy Gerard 😉
Wishing you a Happy Birthday and many, many more!
Wishing many happy returns of this day to Real America’s poet laureate.
Seventy-six? “¡Feliz cumpleaños!” as my Mexican half would say. Well Gerard you have 8 years on me—ok, a little less than 8. July 16 is when, no doubt somewhat reluctantly, I came into this world in Glendale, California. At least, that’s what my birth certificate says. It also lists somebody’s name there as my father though he wasn’t my father. Some shenanigans there for sure.
I am a bit odd in that I actually enjoy getting older. I cannot imagine going back in time and reliving—or better, redoing—some aspect of my past. Given the opportunity to return and start anew, I would just commit entirely different sins, and probably end up in a worse place than I could conceive of now. And older guy and I were talking some time ago. He was much too nostalgic for my taste—I’m not at all nostalgic or wistful or melancholic—and wished he could return to being 39 years old. That is, almost half his life ago. I guess that nothing since being 39 has mattered much to him. As much as I could I felt sorry for him, but of course did not tell him that. Why make things worse?
All my thoughts, all my mind, all my soul, point forward. God will place surprises there for sure, just as He has placed surprises in my past and in yours. I hope we like them.
So “Happy birthday!” as my Caucasian half would say. I’ll use your birthday to toast you this very evening.
Merry Christmas 🎄🎁 and Happy birthday !!! 🎈🎁 from snowy maine. Hope you are well and safe.
Happy Birthday, dear sir.
One of my favorite people in the world share this birthday with you…my eldest son Joshua.
Born this day in 1979, he is wise beyond his years and a wise ass, too.
Wishing you both a wonderful and wonder filled day.
God bless.
I’m with Joan of Arrgghh! above. Happy Birthday, Gerard.
Happy Birthday GV.
VI
Happy Birthday G and I hope you have as many as you desire. I remember hearing the oldsters in my life say that ‘having your health is everything’ and I’ve always thought that statement would be a killer comment for a tombstone but humor aside, it is true.
Thank you again for providing a fantastic forum for information and for comment and for putting up with what some of us will say. I don’t believe that I’ve ever attended a class that I have enjoyed more than my morning sessions here in AD. Have a happy and safe NY and the same to all who enjoy being a part of this place.
Right behind you in 6 weeks, Gerard, and my only regret is that I probably won’t outlive all the assholes I wish to. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, but that’s the way it is.
Happy birthday and many more years of good health and prosperity to you!
oh, I dunno. I got a fairly stout folder of obits behind me.
There comes a point where you stop saying, “I’m gettin’ old.”
There’s no more ” gettin’ ” about it. We’re there.
It ain’t so bad, is it?
Have a great day.
JWM
Or as Jack Benny would say, the “47th Anniversary of my 29th birthday”
Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, and all the best for the coming year, sir – and thank you very much for what you do!
My wife’s birthday is next week (60). It’s difficult for someone whose BD is right on the coattails of Christmas, I think.
76? I like that number and it suits you in some ways (maturity) but not in other ways (youthful ardor).
Keep on keeping on, and happy birthday.
I can’t say it any better than what has come before on this thread. Happy Birthday. It will be 70 for me next month. And tomorrow, 48 for our marriage. In some fashion, each occasion gets a little easier and a little harder at the same time.
Happy Birthday, G.
Jeez! I can’t remember just how long I’ve been reading your stuff and that of others you put up on these interwebz. But I’m five years ahead of you in that “elderly stuff” and it seems to get better every time I log on and find AD. You’re doin’ great. Keep on until you catch up with me.
Happy Birthday, Gerard! Keep it goin’!
Happy birthday Gerard! I reached your age in April. As my Brit friends would say, “Bottoms up chap”!
Happy, Happy Birthday, Gerard!
76?
That’s mere childhood in van der loon years.
You’ll outlive the “Lady in Red”.
Go U!
Happy birthday, sir! And belated Merry Christmas. May you live many more healthy and happy years.
Gerard,
As my Polish heritage would say: Na Zdrowie! (To your health) 🍺😋
As My Lovely 🥰 Mrs. Italian heritage would say: Salud! cent’anni! 🍷🙂
(To your health, may you live 100 years!)
Keep writing to stay young at heart.
Happy Birthday, Gerard.
I turn 60 in 11 days, and my sister turns 70 tomorrow (the 27th). Our parents are dead, now, alas.
“Oh oh I want to know-ow, where does the time go?”
On the other hand, as my Grandfather Adams was wont to say, “It’s a heckuva note to grow old, but consider the alternative.”. (Grandpa had a wry sense of humor.)
Again, happy birthday, Gerard, and many more. I still want to be reading your blog for another 20 years.
Hale Adams
and to heck with the rest of the signature.
I’m pretty sure your mom lived to, or is still alive at, 104. Mine turned 103 last month. We’ve no choice but to rejoice. Happy Birthday, Gerard. I love this place!
It has been 4 years since I wished you a happy, happy. I hope it was a good one!
Let me jump on board the wagon with the band wishing you a happy birthday G! I’m right there a couple of orbits behind you and I just want to say thank you for bringing this all together. Your writing continues to amaze. and the subject matters which interest you always resonate. ‘Lord, may your grace continue to shine through G and this special place”
You’ve probably already dealt with this. But the worst thing about turning 70 is muscle loss. It’s like one of those werewolf movies, only your arm turns stringy and wrinkled as you watch. Really hard to deal with.
Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, and Happy New Year!
My, what a busy week! Thanks for being here for another trip around the sun.
I consider my visits here as some of if not the best of my time spent on the web. It’s certainly the sanest and most thought provoking. And for this – I’ll be eternally grateful.
When you’re finally called home, you will be SORELY missed, by me at least.
Best wishes for another year, hopefully not as crazy and a bit more peaceful than the last couple have been. I know – perhaps wishful thinking, but I can hope can’t I?
Well, I hope you had a good birthday. I’d like to thank you for sharing your space on the internet with all of us. American Digest is an almost daily read for me; there is no superlative adjective for the quality of your writing, thanks again. Karen
Happy belated, I appreciate you and what you do!
Happiest of days! Don’t give up.
Old?
Old has a kind of last-chapter finality to it.
You’re not old, you are older.
Happy Birthday, Gerard, and may this post continue to be seen in ongoing years. God Bless.
Happy Birthday, sir! May merciful Providence continue to rain blessings upon you.
And we’re all here for one more turn around the sun. Much to be grateful for. Have a great day, Gerard.
JWM
Gerard, Best wishes for good health, good humor and continued good sense.
Happy birthday, Gerard, please stick around.
All the best on ‘Your’ day Gerard. Seems you have many, many people here at AD that expect to see your site daily.
Wishing you a very happy birthday! The poem is still lovely!
Some of us still have so much work yet to do–please stay with us!
Wishing you a happy and healthy 2023!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR!!
Once again, a very happy Birthday to you Gerard! I look forward to wishing you a happy birthday again next year.
Happy Birthday, Gerard. Blessings on your special day even though it’s not as special as your other one. Or is it?
You don’t look a day over…
Have a blessed birthday!
Happy Birthday, mine was yesterday, hope you have many more!
Happy Birthday Gerard!
Happy Birthday!
Yes, yes, Happy Birthday Gerard from Lake Pueblo. And many more!
Keep on living and loving life the way you do Mr. Van der Leun. How generous you are.
You got a couple decades on me, and I got a crush for you that won’t quit.
Check you email box, Only By Fire finally to music. Ageless poetry.
Happy Birthday, brother! Tried calling you today to wish you a belated one! And I finally figured out where you are sitting in that picture. It’s the coffee shop across from Ken’s, right? That building was modified way back in the early 80’s by the Love Israel family and has been occupied at least a dozen times by everything from a nail spa, children’s clothing store, multiple coffee and deli shops, and is now standing vacant (I think), waiting for the next entrepreneur to try their hand. Come back to QA and see what you can do with it! Love you! AA