OLD AGE AND DON QUIXOTE
I may have lived partially in imagination all along but now the fantasies and the Don Quixote drive become much more intense. Partly it is because I have moved from the householder stage where I was for almost 60 years, doing the things that householders do. I didn’t leave willingly and it was very painful moving from WE to me. But suddenly I am free to do some of the things that I was constrained from doing before. Not simply constrained from doing before, but didn’t want to do while WE, because they would cause hurt and jealousy and resentment to the WE that I was. It was very difficult to slowly realize that I wasn’t WE any more and that I now have very little time left and need to do the things I had left undone or haven’t tried. And this has made me appear a little reckless and foolish and nutty, a demented old man living in a dream world, doing things his worn out body was barely able to do. These trips have been that kind of unpredicted, reckless, expensive behavior.
I am not the only one. Widows suddenly fall violently in love and become seductive mistresses, or they set they their sights on another doddering old man and marry him and we call it sweet romance and cheer them on. It is the stage of the crone who does what she wants and is completely honest and wants to live a solitary life after a life of caring for others. She wants to create and relax and do just what pleases her. It is a stage of life that none of us choose but when it arrives, if we make it this far, we just have to feel our way to what feels right and make the most of it.
So I can see this in me as well. The Sancho side of me just shakes his head in disbelief.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 
Ah, Bill, you articulate so well what surely so many of us 80+ers feel or sometimes do, but usually don’t. Yeaaaa to going, one way or another.