Take Me To the Water When My Well Runs Dry

Today I found a tape that I made back in 2000 entitled "The Zamsky Effect." It was made in 2000 but referred to 1994 and the events the preceeded my entry into computer work at Yale... a subtopic that could be called "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Funny that I should find it now.

The title of this post is taken from Bonnie Rait's "Shake A Little." Great song, go listen to it if you don't have it. I've got it on "Road Tested," a concert album, two tapes in one box. And I thought of it tonight because it so encapsulates my experience of spending time with MR and A DNJ d G.

MR is my intellectual inspiration, my CR guru, and my living proof that CR can get you carded well into your thirties. Aubrey is a walking party, an ongoing celebration of what is fun about being alive. In a cab on the way to the airport, I said to Aubrey, "It's good that you don't do CR, because we have to communicate to people that no matter how you've lived, rejuvenation medicine can save you." Aubrey is redemption walking... being with him makes you believe that hope is more than a waste of time. It's hard to describe what it is about Aubrey that makes you believe, but it's real, and I felt it the first time I clicked on www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens, and so much more so when I met him in person. The calculation is simple: Are you having fun now? If yes, then why would you want to stop having fun at some point in the future? Of course you wouldn't! So join me and make the party go on indefinitely!

MR changed my life the moment I ran across him on the List... I changed my diet, I lost about a third of my body weight, I became a different person... a smaller, healthier, happier person. I started to dream of a world in which we didn't take disability and death for granted. As he kissed me goodbye yesterday in the airport, I said, "There's only one goodbye that really matters, and neither of us plan to have that anytime soon." We both plan to use CR as a bridge to the radical life-extending biomedicine of which Aubrey de Grey is the prophet.

Aubrey doesn't do CR, and he doesn't think it will work, or at least not much. He says he'd do CR if someone else would cook, but the fact is, he'll eat anything that's put in front of him, so that doesn't mean much. Being with Aubrey is just plain fun... hard to explain, but if you remember what it felt like to be in college hanging out with your friends, and then fast-forward and put the faces of your crazy college friends onto the Prophet of Immortality, you've got A DNJ d G. MR's exactness is a thing of beauty, it thrills me to watch him plan his life so carefully that nothing gets in his way. I love his routines and carefulness, and I miss both him and his food now that I'm home. As we all know, I'm not nearly as exacting as MR, though I'd like to be. Like me, Aubrey is uninterested in jet lag, in insomnia, in lack of food, in whatever. Being with MR is like an all inclusive spa and resort... being with Aubrey is like being back in school. Both of them are tons of fun. Both of them remind me that there's a reason to keep being alive. And watching them work together, arguing about things I don't understand and don't need to understand... well, bloggiefriends, you know how much I must love that. It's magic, and my life has turned into a fairytale.

Why give this up? If you're having a good time now, why would you want to stop? Why get old and sick one minute before you have to?

Some more quotes from songs on "The Zamsky Effect."

There's no one to hear
You might as well scream
They never woke up
From the American Dream
And they don't understand
What they don't see
When they look through you and they look past me
You and I dancing slow
We've got nowhere to go
Melissa Etheridge "Nowhere to Go"

For you I would crawl
Through the darkest dungeon
Climb a castle wall
If you're my Rapunzel
Let your hair down...
Dave Matthews, "Rapunzel"