Bruce the Blog

I survived The Sixties, including a trip to the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the fin de decennie happening at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, that became a cultural totem 40 years ago this August, half-a-million backsides stuck in mud and loving it. (Those “three days of peace and music” August 15-17, aka “An Aquarian Exposition,” seem to have lost a measure of mystique and luster since the fin de siecle, not unlike John F. Kennedy’s presidential legacy, which loses loft, it seems, with each successive generation. The Woodstock anniversary approaches more with fizzle than fireworks.)

Surviving the decade of The Sixties is a simple, unremarkable fact, yet yokels like me wear it as if a badge of honor. My excuse: You just had to be there to understand why a large cohort of Baby Boomers who lived through that decade will always deem it complicated and remarkable.

In less than a year from now, I’ll embark on another 60s adventure. This time, though, I’m not in mere survival mode. That’s too simple and unremarkable. I won’t accept anything less than thriving in my 60s.

So far, so good. For starters, this is one of those rare years I actually kept my Number One New Year’s resolution, triptych-style: Lose weight. Get fit. Stay healthy.

Since we sang auld lang syne to usher in ‘09, I shed 20 pounds (with 15-20 more to go) by shedding virtually all the starch and sugar foods I crave, along with shedding my aversion to inhabiting the gym to pump iron as well as heart muscle.

It occurs to me only at this very instant of writing that possibly the added motivation that made all the difference in my newfound regimen and outlook is a subsconscious wake-up call reminding me this is the last year I’ll ever know as a fiftysomething. (“Countdown to 60!” Read the blog, coming soon to a screen near, or on, you.)

With my own Age of 60s looming like a cumulo-nimbus cloud, the Age of 50s by contrast takes on a rather fluffy, cirrusy feel. Born in the ‘50s, through force of will, I seek a destiny to be born again, even as I exit the Age of 50s.

Call it auto-hypnosis (my euphemism for self-delusion), but from where I sit up these days, it’s forgivable, if not downright mandatory, to think of sixty as sexy, if only because the alternative is so deflating, it’s enough to make me not only sad, but sag.

American architect Louis Sullivan really was on to something in his versified credo published in 1896 that culminated with, “That form ever follows function. This is the law.” Not only does the human form benefit from the functional discipline imposed on it through a fitness regimen; so does mental form benefit: Energy, focus and clarity come to the fore from head to toe.

Besides, you know what they say: 60 is the new 50 (they don’t say that? well, if you have any respect — and empathy — for elders, you’ll humor me here). My fervent hope is that in the next 10 months, advances in health care and medical research will mean that by my next birthday, 60 will be the new 49 – dare I hope for 48?

Just call me the curious case of Bruce Button. Yeah, baby! With any luck, by the time I’m 69, that’ll be the new 19. Just in time for me to attend the 50th Anniversary Commemorative Concert of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Maybe this time, they’ll have chairs. Rockin’ chairs.