Facing Ka’ena Point: On Turning Eighty

> It is not the big number—eighty—that shocks me (though I sometimes gulp when I utter it), but, rather, the banal image of an implacable hourglass, most of its sand heaped at the bottom, the last negligible pinch of grains sifting down, unstoppable, a finite amount, less each time I look.

That is such a beautiful description of facing one's own old age.

Paul Theroux is one of those writers who has faded in and out of my life over the years but one I always thoroughly enjoy returning to.

His writing is like catching up with an old friend who never begrudges the years when you didn't call or write and within 10 minutes, it's like you were never apart.

Eddie would go.

Can't read, paywalled...