It seems that every time I go to look for something, it is gone. Out of the thousands of things stuffed in my townhouse, the phone number I wrote down last week or the address I need or eMail address someone has asked me for is gone.

Part of passing by the Golden Years is that things seem to drop away, disappear into the past, until titles of books, magazines, movies, TV shows, and all the other stuff that was once so new and popular might now have just as well never existed.

My mother has been gone for over a decade, my father more than a quarter century. The job I worked past my 69 th birthday is also gone. I now pass out cards and then sit patiently by the phone and wait for someone who needs a model to give me a call.

My life has finally circled back to where it started, only then, 60 years ago, I was waiting for someone to call who needed a magician. Then I would climb upon a platform, they would turn a light on me, and I would entertain the audience. Now I climb upon a platform, stand or sit beneath a light, and the audience who are now made up of students, sketch, draw, or sometimes paint a likeness of me.

At some point in the future the two ends of the circle of life will touch. The circle will have been completed. The magic act will have ended. The drawing will have been completed. And I will be gone.