birthday musings

I'm not opposed to the passage of time. I don't dread the creeping, ticking dial of one year adding to the next. As I have no desire to die at this particular moment, I'll gladly accept the advancing year with a wry smile.

I like assuming the adding wisdom and poise I like to think gathers around my person the moment my birthday strikes at midnight. My soul feels heavier, and I equate this added weight with experience and maturity, and in no way see it as some fabrication of my imagination.

I like surrounding myself with those closest to me come celebration time. For years, I've boycotted parties. I'd rather spend the day with those that know me best, who demand no show from me. A documented tale of birthdays past chart very intimate gatherings. Nothing garish or forced. I am nothing on my birthday if not relaxed. This particular birthday has departed from the pattern in necessity. I am surrounded by acquaintances and near-friends. I spent yesterday alone, celebrating on my terms.

I'm balancing between bemused anxiety and existential brooding. Perhaps it's my recent series of life changes. Perhaps it's feeling the slow sting of adulthood. Perhaps it's realizing how lonely I really have been. Perhaps it's realizing that I have accomplished all I had hoped I would at this point. Perhaps it's the fact that my life plan stopped here and I have a hell of a lot to figure out from tomorrow on.



Regardless, happy twenty-fifth.

but i'll admit that i was glad it was over

Woke one morning, free. No thought how long the change went unnoticed. No scenes haunting or conversations echoing. No reverberating regrets. Just silence. 

But I'll admit that I was glad it was over. Now you're just somebody that I used to know.

And I hope I'm just somebody that you used to know.

unintentional innuendo

work chat. brilliantly uncomfortable for all parties. all because i was sipping a coke.

male work-associate: is vanilla coke so much better than regular coke?

me: yes. 

so certain are you
yes. 

well, i guess that settles it
it does. 

i guess me question is: i was never a coke guy, but does is the vanilla taste way different?

yes. 

what do you usually drink?

because this is nectar. no lie. 

sprite

i tend to obey my thirst

lame joke?

maybe

gross. 

to the drink AND the joke. 

yeah, i tried

sometime, you need to pour me a little drop of it into a cup

i want to sample your nectar

whoa!

that sounded messed up

so sorry

whoa. that's actionable. 

really

did not mean it like that

coming attraction: sexual harassment seminar. 

next week. 

huh

well, some time let me have some vanilla coke

that's all

nothing else implied

and that is the end of this ill-fated and somewhat ill-conceived conversation

fair enough. 


fin. 

i don't want to loose myself.

I have before, but don't plan to now.

one more word from gilda radner

I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.

a word from gilda radner

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

to be a person is to have a story to tell.

I love stories. I love hearing the personalized, fractioned portions of human experience told with unfiltered honesty. I found these two stories tonight. Neither are particularly happy, per se, but both are honest. Both stories have been carried. Perhaps some fragmented peace comes by the telling.

danny and annie


germans in the woods

To be a person is to have a story to tell. Isak Dinesen.