I sat in this chair; an akward, inflexible thing that brought more to mind that just sitting. The way I sat in this too short, too small object brought to mind a curiosity in my life. An idea that came back again and again through the years. I am old at twenty-four. Not to say I feel physically old. I was aerobically in the best shape of my life, and there seemed no end to progress in the direction of fitness. No, I was growing younger on the exterior, but my interior deterioration chugged along at it's consistent, nonstop pace.
In that chair I felt my feet bend together, my shoulders slouch forward, and my hands shrivel inward. Even my hair seemed to lose it normal fullness and my eyes felt weary from years that hadn't even existed. It was as if I had lived another life full of experiences and could not wait to find rest for my bones. They creaked but did not hurt. I was two at once, a stranger within another stranger which made the whole of me old, but young.
I repositioned myself within the chair and let out a sigh not of tiredness or sadness. It was a sigh made from the joining I experienced. As if the meeting of two created a rush of the air that once stood between them. Coming ever closer, they pushed together until there was no visible space between them. Then the real fusion began. Quickly, molecules collided in a real but unreal connection. Pushing out theose that were redundant and fusing those that must be joined; one experience to another, one scar to another, and one memory to another.
Why was I old and young? I had been told on different occasions that I seemed like a grandfather, or and elder. I sat in the way that old men sit and thought in the way that old men think. I would feel drawn to the elderly and their story as if it were mine. I was fact checking their statement for corroborating evidence to a story I didn't know. My kindred spirits were not to be found among those who shared my birthyear, but those who might have been my physical father or grandfather.
There were parts to my age and seemed to come from many places. They were drawn from time and place and pulled towards me as if I were some blackhole, but my insatiable power did not draw matter to a place where gravity was irresistible. I was irresistably drawing experience, life force, and understanding to me and I would connect age with youth in a cold fusion that permanently altered my very being. I pulled from the rugged, western cowboy whose weathered face knew too many places and had seen too many things. I sucked up the english gentleman whose manners portrayed the understanding of history and civility. I absorbed the dying soldier whose deathbed prayer hoped for a better world, but knew all to well the futility of his bitter struggles.
With these pieces fused I sat and waged war within myself. Hopefulness against cynicism, misery against ecstasy, martyrdom against egotism, independence against community, and on and on it went until every battle was waged and every war fought. No answer was to be found and no reilef was to be administered. I was, all at once, the epitome of all things ancient and new. The worlds longest standing questions raised in my mere existence and, without a word, I continued the long march through old age.