Sahara Unveiled

Well, I was going to write about this book, but it's been summarized much more capably than I could here. Not that I read this blog, just found it when searching on the title to confirm the spelling of William Langewiesche's name. I should investigate this blog a bit... Anyway, I'll forgo my own description of it. Suffice to say, I enjoyed it, and it left a big impression on me: Africa is a hard, troublesome, difficult place.

But I can talk about my experiences around reading the book. I'd seen it in the living room, and picked it up and put it in my bag when we were packing to take Nick to Philadelphia. Even at the time I knew I probably wouldn't have time or inclination to read it while we were there, but I did read it after we returned. And...

It wasn't until page 150 that I realized that I'd read it before.

At that point my memories came back. I'd enjoyed the book— his writing, his observances, his attitude— a lot. My impressions on rereading it were substantially the same as when I'd read it the first time, ten years earlier. But I hadn't noticed.

I was rather taken aback, and sat in wonderment as this all sank in. Years ago, in my twenties, I'd recognize within half a page that I'd read something before. Granted, I hadn't read quite so much at that point in my life. But the contrast between then and now bothered me. How could I read so far into the book and not realize that it wasn't the first time I'd read it? Is this what aging does?

Now, this post isn't really about aging and what it does, but about my distressing tendency to notice events and relate them to aging. It may be that the book just hadn't made much of an impression on me up to that point (this is where he describes the family with the 5-year-old boy taking a car trip into the desert, getting lost, and dying, slowly, of thirst). So, maybe I was just not engaged enough with the book until that point for it to make enough impression on me to remember it ten years later. And then, part of me responds "yes, but that wouldn't have made a difference when I was 25." So I argue with myself about whether something is or is not a sign of aging, and whether it really matters all that much. It's a bit troubling, and part of it is wondering to what extent I will inherit my father's proclivity to worry about himself, his anxiety about losing his mental abilities— and, well, his actual loss of mental acuity.

Sheesh. I'm 51. There is something about turning 50 that makes it no longer possible to ignore the fact that you're aging, which I had managed to do during my 40's. But I'm not old. Am I?