Bela Lugosi Is Still Dead

But you're not.

A trope of the vampire movie is that the Immortal One is always of another age from that in which they currently find themself. It’s why vampires always seem more courtly than the plebes whose blood they vant to suck. They live by an older code and an older set of mores that do not fit in their modern environment. The vampire is somebody who moves through the world but is not of the world and, lately, I’m starting to wonder if I might be one. Which would suck since I became a vegetarian about a year ago.

Even so, while I do not find myself particularly courtly, I am now reaching the age when the world is no longer as comprehensible as it once was. The first thing that goes is one’s knowledge of popular culture. The Skibidi toilet and Brat summer and the various one-named celebrities dating various other one-named celebrities. All of it passes through me like a breeze through a screen door. I’m not only uninformed about such things but I’m even more uninterested than I am uninformed.

It remains unclear why vampires hold their hands in this manner.

The second thing I notice happening is a kind of disconnect from workaday worries. I don’t mean a lack of empathy towards suffering but an objective remove from people’s dumb shit: the gossip and relationship drama and work annoyances and all the rest of it. I’m happy to lend an ear but little of it moves me. I suppose it’s because, like anybody of a certain age, we’ve seen and heard it all before. Yes, yes – it all seems of the greatest import to you now, but it’s nothing. Emotional dust bunnies.

It's not that I feel above it. I don’t, since I have my own emotional dust bunnies tumbling through my own life. I just mean that lives unspool in familiar ways. Just as we chart the physical milestones of our children, we also eventually reach an age in which we can chart the emotional milestones of adults. First shitty boss, first shitty boyfriend, first weird roommate situation, second shitty boyfriend, and so on. It all has a ring of the overly-familiar.

The other day I was at my vacation home (the Delta Sky Club) eavesdropping on a trio of travelers, two young adults and an older woman. While the older woman accompanied the young adults she didn’t seem to be of them. She was engaged with them and listened to the young woman as she explained something or another, but I felt like she was observing them the same way I was, interested but detached, like a good shrink. Or, you know, a vampire.

Also, my eye is changing. It used to be that anybody over the age of 60 just looked like an undifferentiated mass of old. Now, though, my eye sees older people as they are and automatically adjusts to see them as it imagines they once were. Not to say that I don’t see people in their current age as less than the person they once were, only that I feel as if I’m able to see them in a broader context than the singular now. I see myself this way now, too.

Time itself is getting a little slippy. Every person eventually experiences time’s accelerating gait. The way it speeds up the years, one cycle about the sun blending into the next with startling rapidity. One year is upon us before it feels as if the last one truly began. And yet, it also slows. Sometimes I feel like I can also pinch a moment between my fingers, examine it, and release it back into the breeze.

And, of course, we are living through a political moment that feels both unique and scarily familiar. As a younger person, I might have catastrophized the moment more than I already am, but, as an older person, I recognize that nations, and the world, have been through far worse than what is currently underway. That doesn’t mean our own situation won’t devolve into something more terrible than we’re already facing, only that however dire things feel, we are comforted* by the fact that they can get much, much worse.

Which might end up being quite good for the vampire business.

The thing about vampires is they don’t feel old. Nor do I. And I certainly don’t feel wise. Only experienced. Just because somebody has driven down a particular stretch of road time and again doesn’t make them an expert on road construction, but it hopefully makes them aware of where the potholes may be found.

The irony of vampires and all immortal creatures is that they are blessed with a long life from which they cannot escape. Humans don’t have such problems. Our time here is limited but our dance card is full. Life crams so much into such a short time. Too much, maybe. Maybe that’s why our blood is so sweet to the undead. Maybe all of that love and pain and frustration and joy flavors us in ways unattainable to those doomed to wander the world without an expiration date. In moments such as ours, the wise vampire would counsel that this, too, shall pass. Then again, the wise vampire might also start considering a return ticket to Transylvania.

*We are not comforted