Jerry Brown for President

I describe 'getting old' as feeling like god's let go of me.

First I'm lifted into the air, then I'm turned upside down so that everything falls down inside of my body and I lose most of my hair.

I become so serious no one knocks on my door after school anymore to see if I can come out and play, not even Adam, age 9, my friend up the street. We used to watch "The Simpsons" together every Sunday night but now I don't have the time.

So many books to read! My bed stand droops. Paul Tillich every morning, a passage or two from "The Courage to Be"; "Naples '44" by Norman Lewis, the great and near forgotten travel writer; Italo Svevo's masterpiece, "Zeno's Conscience", my second reading; "Monsieur Ambivalence", a beautiful book by Thomas Fuller who sucks the marrow out of all the modern masters of fiction in his modest little fable; and "Mencius", in the translation by David Hinton, to be consulted when all else seems doomed, which seems all too often these days.

Sacramento isn't what it used to be either, it's become increasingly toxic, a place you either don't want to leave or can't wait to get away from, to live in forever or for one night and never come back.

Gradually, I'm becoming more interested in what can be achieved through weakness than through power. It's just a thought, an idea to insert into my memoir, though it might work, the time might be right. I've come to the very edges of my life, stared at it from all sides, and see that certain issues will never be resolved.