Month: May 2017

There’s a thing I’ve been doing on my birthday, off and on, since I’ve been about 16.

Now, this thing I do, off and on but mostly on since I was 16, is not anything special but it is very personal. I don’t recall the details of every birthday I’ve done this. I do recall certain special occasions. These usually correspond with the typical age milestones we all agree on: 16. 18. 21. 30. 45. 50. In fact, milestones are particularly well suited for this exercise.

Typically I wait until the end of my birthday, after whatever festivities, if any, have concluded. It doesn’t take very long but it does necessitate a certain amount of privacy. I don’t make a big deal out of my birthday – I don’t have a party, I do my best not to fish for a happy birthday wish, I’m not concerned with gifts, and I don’t feel the pull to be in a crowd, either at a bar or a music venue. Usually, my wife and I will go and have a nice meal somewhere. I’ll be home before it is dark out (not because I eat at the time the grey hairs do but because it’s still not dark here in the Pacific northwest by 9pm at the end of May), perhaps I’ll indulge in a bit of cannabis before I watch a movie, listen to some music, or maybe just read. That’s usually how my birthday goes. That, and this thing I do.

The first thing I do after I’ve found a quiet spot to myself is try and find some stars to look at. A body of water is also good, if the sky is obscured. Any beautiful spot of nature will do. Still, one takes what one can, and I do recall doing this exercise in some less than beautiful surroundings.  But no matter where I may be, I tell myself no matter what has happened during this last year and no matter what is likely to happen during the next, you are damned lucky to be standing here able to have that thought; be glad you are alive, here, now, with possession of your faculties and your sense of wonder and gratitude still intact.

Then I review the year that has just gone past, the good, the bad, and the merely mediocre. I spend some time thinking about people who are no longer in my life, people I will always love, even though time and circumstance has formed us into people who can no longer be together, or the forks in our individual paths simply lead elsewhere. This list has grown significantly as I’ve aged. I imagine it will grow longer still, hopefully at a glacial pace. I appreciate those who still are in my life and I resolve to keep them there, as best I can.

When I was younger, the thing I do next was much less grounded. I cast an eye towards what might most be in store for my future self. I remember being 16 and knowing that in the near term, things were pretty predictable: get through high school, get out of this house, see the world. But I didn’t just think about the next couple years, I tried to envision what my life would be like at 20, 30, 50. Needless to say, the wild eyed musings of a 16 year old in 1982 don’t come close to the reality of turning 51 years old in the beginning of the 21^st century. No matter what the future holds, I know who I am in a way that is simply impossible for an adolescent.

But I remember that young man’s mind with some frightening detail. I know what I’ve lost, traded, and gained over those intervening thirty five years. When I was thirteen I was reading Plato’s Apology and learning about Socrates. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” “Know yourself.” Socrates said. Question your underlying assumptions. You might think this a difficult exercise for a teenager but it really isn’t. Many in our culture would be well served by an introduction to Socrates just prior to puberty. He innately appeals to the teenage mind. If Socrates were alive today, he’d be a 13 year old girl with the catch phrase “You don’t know what you think you know, you know?” Examining your life at 16 doesn’t take that long, because when you’re that young there isn’t that much for you to examine, you haven’t had the time to develop depth, or at least not in the way 50 years behind you affords.

My motto back then was “variety is the spice of life.” I craved experiences and sensations that an overly authoritarian household attempted to deny me at every turn. Yet by god I was going to have them and have them I did. I not only had my fun I had your’s as well. And his. And hers. There were occasions where those good times easily could have led to my demise or a life nowhere near as good as the one I enjoy. Fortune favors the foolish and the phantasmagorically fucked up. I wanted to live every life but my own. It’s the reason why I still love fiction. There are so many ways to be human and I want to experience as many of those ways as I can.

I clearly recall trying to guess what it would feel like being 50. When I turned 50 last year, I tried to imagine what it would feel like being 100. I hope I’m as wrong at 100 as I was at 16. Because being older is better than what that 16 year old could imagine. All those experiences I yearned for, and more, are now part of a vast pool of knowing. Knowing not just in the sense of facts and processes neatly cataloged and stored but knowing in a visceral way. What it feels like to win. To lose. To not being able to tell the difference. To affirm your allegiance towards something that will always be grander than you as an individual, maybe even something noble.  To know that vast pool will only ever be but a rapidly drying puddle compared to the ocean of what there is to know and be. It’s not enough to merely know yourself. In the end we are responsible to that self; doesn’t it makes sense then to develop into the best version possible?

This year will be a little different. I’m essentially doing here what I would have done in the privacy of my new home. Snapping the laundry of my mind out in the warm breeze of exposition. Letting some sunlight in and beating the carpets. When I was sixteen I craved the new. At fifty one I still do. It’s a good thing life moves so fast, I never have to worry about being jaded and I am old enough now to not be tempted by that I have already done.

I hope all the wonders we seem to be teetering on the cusp of come to pass. I would like to live in a world where turning 50 means you’ve finally exited childhood and are ready for the life of an adult. I often think it’s taken me that long to at last have a firm grasp of what being an adult means. Whenever I feel the urge to excoriate myself for taking so long I’m reminded we all exist somewhere on that spectrum and for everyone I might feel inferior to in that regard, the examples of those below me are legion. I’d be more inclined to patience if the times weren’t so otherwise demanding.

I am still learning. I want to be able to say the same when I’m 100.

Despite overwhelming evidence that urges otherwise and all the times I play the contrarian, I remain optimistic. Life is fantastically rich and good. Life is almost unbearably tragic and sad. I try in my own way to maximize the former and minimize the latter. To do otherwise leads to despair or a callous heart. I leave regret aside as much as I am able – it’s too easy to slip into self pity.

And besides, I have decades of memories to remind myself just how precious it is to be alive. I aim myself towards a future where the really good stuff has yet to happen and the worst is yet to come.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

If there’s one thing about the times I find myself living in, it’s how quickly one becomes inured to the snapping cords of normalcy. To be fair, supplanting normal is the nature of our culture, our commerce, and our technology – a perfect confluence that inherently eschews tradition in favor of inevitable change. We’ve just supercharged the speed at which that change takes place. I get how baby boomers are freaked out about the way modern life has turned out. I still marvel at how quickly people have adopted their own mobile computer that also can shoot video, surf the internet, and let you talk to mom. And by adopted I mean that in the most intimate way: challenge yourself next time you go out to a restaurant or have a layover in an airport, to put your device away and observe the crowd; you’ll soon notice that many people pay more attention to their tablet/cell/laptop than they often do to their actual children – and it doesn’t take too long for the child to return the favor.

Just because I notice how little people look up anymore doesn’t mean I’m anti-technology. Quite the opposite, I not only think it represents our ingenuity and creativity, I think it embodies a victory of knowledge over superstition. Human history is in large part a constant race between catastrophe and our ability to outrace it with our technology. True, all too often that technology carries within it the seed of future catastrophe but who said life was ever supposed to be easy? Call it cosmically just that the more power we gain over nature only makes us all the more vulnerable.

I like to watch and listen when I go out into my community. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m very good at hearing your conversation, couple in the booth next to me. Guy talking to his buddy on the phone in the grocery store. Group of old ladies discussing the devil walking among us as if they saw him swinging his dick from a bell tower just last Sunday. There is good along with the bad. I also see and hear people out there alarmed at the things we ought to be alarmed with, a list that is in itself, alarming. I see and hear the common kindnesses and natural goodwill that is just as much a part of us as is the all too human tendency to look away, or convince ourselves to see what we want.

It is more common than not to be ground down by the necessities of day to day life, leaving not enough cognitive or emotional wampum at the end of the day to barter for some truth, much less wisdom. Today, just as in the past, we’ve always used a privileged caste to shoulder that burden. An Atlas to carry our worldview, a burning bush to light our way, a glorious revolution to either fight for or against. To be sure, most of us simply inherit the framework provided us by geography and parentage. But those cords are snapping too, mostly due to our technology. We’re self selecting into tribes of self interests, a disparate mix of obsessions and escapes competing with noble calls to action in a time of crisis. Is it more satisfying to be a partial member of many small tribes than it is to be a full member of one so large they will never know you by name? I kind of think it is. I think it fits in with our evolutionary heritage.

I’ve found myself disengaging from social media and cable outlets as of late. I think it’s gotten to the point where teams have been chosen and everyone is eyeing each other to see who’s going to jump first. Even so, I regard it my duty as a citizen to stay informed. I find it much easier to do so without watching 99% of cable news. AP alerts, Reuters, a handful of websites, and some carefully chosen print subscriptions have so far kept me reasonably informed. I simply cannot watch the current administration’s talking bobbleheads or the Republican leadership providing it with cover. They erode my faith in humanity.

I don’t like the word faith. I try not to have faith in anything. As a practical concern, I realize this is not how humans operate. We take on faith a great many things. I’ve been able to recognize those things I’ve had faith in due to the shock of faith’s disappointment. It’s hard for me to choose whether I’d rather feel that shock of disappointment over the grim satisfaction of a predicted cynicism fulfilled. I think I would. Especially when you start gazing into the yawning despair enfolding before us now. To do otherwise leads to building bunkers and hoarding food.

Our upper crust overlords, multinational corporations, military contractors and industry, and everyone else who has the means to purchase their very own slice of what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan call a conscience, are the ones who are pushing us all towards the brink. They could care less about 45 – they merely haven’t gotten their tax breaks and a legal means of dumping coal ash into our rivers, er, I mean regulatory reforms yet. All of their hand picked stooges have yet to be placed in a position to do the most harm for the country and benefit for the buyer. They must be getting antsy that the Russia collusion investigation is getting in the way of staffing. And until they get what they want, they’re going to let the fire take root.

Meanwhile, our very own syphillus ridden Nero is busily sawing away at every chord of normalcy he can wrap his tiny hands around. Isn’t the noise fucking horrendous? How much of this before he breaks the instrument altogether?

Twang, there goes another cord.

We still have each other. Strengthen the cords of normalcy around you. If the center is going to hold, we’re the ones who are going to have to do it.