When I Grow Up

Just the other day I asked myself, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Art?”  Here I am almost 90 and I still don’t have a good answer to that question. I often feel like a guy who wants to jump on a horse and go riding off in all directions.  Simultaneously.  I would.  I’ve done a lot of that in my lifetime..  Focusing and remaining focused has never been easy for me. 

When I grow up…

Early in my lifetime I made the decision to give my imagination free reign. I hoped that doing that might preserve that feeling of going “Whee” like I was riding a roller coaster and really alive.  A line in one of my poems which turned into a song says, “Let that little kid come out in me. Let me chase a butterfly, let me climb a tree.  Let me mess my hair up and giggle out in glee. Oh Lordie, let that little kid come out in me.” 

I never wrote to make money.  Early on I wrote to stay sober. Later I wrote because I just had to write.  Whatever was on my mind just had to be captured or perhaps I would die.  OK, maybe that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people but making sense to others has never been a requirement in my life.  I have observed that many creative people do not make much sense to most people. 

So what do I want to be when I grow up?  So, just where is it written that I must grow up?  Like my poem titled Growth says, I hope to keep on growing Up! Up!

Up!  Until the day I die.

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