I took my mom out of the rehab, place today. First trip out since the broken hip. We went to Schlosky’s for a sandwich, got it from the drive up window and ate in a church parking lot in Liberty. She is losing her mind; literally: to Alzheimer’s. She is at the point where she fades in and out of lucidity. We had a really nice time. There was a moment when she looked down at her hands in her lap and she remarked that she was thinking, “wow, look at those old hands”, and then she thought,” oh, of course, they are old hands, I am old.” And I thought, yea. I know. I see myself and think, wow, look at that old dude. And then I think, yea. Because I am old now. Not seventy six with a brain eating disease, But forty eight with a sense of pending decomposition. I have this idea that the reason birds in flight are so fascinating to us is because, somehow, we, as humans, have experienced all the forms of consciousness. Not in this life. But in a kind of developed genetic memory. ( Sorry to my creationistm, and rationalist, friends). Still, it’s a pet notion. An evolution of consciousness thing. And if I give it a little space to breath. I can sort of see how we might know what we are in for with aging. Like someone who has been dunked and had their head held under water, knows what that is like. Or maybe like someone who has been through the transcendence of death, and knows that there is not that much to fear. Not in the way we know things, like what city we were born in, but in the way children know the conditions of their wellbeing, without really having any way of comprehending what all is going on around them. Or in the way a still quiet voice knows that someone is a con, or a thief, without the benefit of any reason to sense such a thing.