nudging into open water

Nosegays and goiters ...
Why not?

Since getting old is largely a matter of shrinking, language and mental acuity, like physical size, diminish. A word or two will do where once woven lattices prevailed.

Once I was 6'2". Now, I imagine, I am roughly 6' or a little shorter. I don't measure. I don't want to know. I don't want it rubbed in. But it's not only physical size.

The mind, like the Arctic ice, breaks into islands and the polar bears of yore find no regal realm or footing. There is a place to walk, yes, but it's slippery and the child inside these somehow new skates slips without grace from here to there. Much of the time, he feels as if he were somehow on his ass with...

Nosegays and goiters.
Short dips into what once was a long, smooth oneness.
Perhaps with another small island marked "pulchritude."

Things that once fit and performed a wholeness are laughing, I imagine ... laughing with the narwhals.

But not me. Shrinking is "most discommoding," as the butler might say.

Butlers never laugh....

Oh yes, "feuerzeug" can come too, together with "nosegays" and "goiters." In the army, when learning German from the get-go, I fell in love with the word "feuerzeug" or "lighter." The word made me laugh. Delight. Why? I haven't got a clue, but even today I can smile like the dancing flames it produces.