On the cusp between Leo and Virgo…
On the cusp of the half-century mark…
On the cusp of the cusp of something more…
Today I turn 49 years old. I don’t quite know what to do with that, other than to play this song, and to pray. Yes – I pray. Every night. At every moment of doubt, at every moment of worry. Little prayers, little offerings, little exercises in superstition or faith and what’s the goddamn difference?
You wake to greet the brand new day
Wake up, realize you’re late Rush out to make your plane Can’t find your keys again…You need to reawake, now
Listen to the words I’m saying in this line, and That your life will be just fine, and Your troubles do not stay They get replaced with good times Now you’ve got a great life Smile as you walk by Thinkin’ ’bout the dayBorn of fear, born of trauma, born of need and desire and survival – we all come into this world in such similar ways – messy and wet and crying out of lonely desperation, clinging to whatever is immediately around us, grasping at something or someone to take care of us – for protection, for security, for comfort, for love. Some of us never learn how to stop crying. Some of us never learn how to start again.
This body, the only body I have ever known, the only body I will ever know, this shell of my physical existence, breaks down a little more with each passing year. The lithe and limber days of carefree, flexible, quick-to-bounce-back forgiveness calcify and become brittle at the turn of an almost-half-century. This body – it cracks and crinkles now, it whispers and laughs and collapses – it betrays this mind, disconnecting from what I think I can do, what I once could do, what I lost the ability to do… and today of all days I can barely formulate a coherent sentence.
It’s late, your legs won’t rest today
Your body seems to ache Your mind will win the race Burnin’ by your sleep againThe light blooms from the sun
The long dark night undone Another day of fun Waiting for some luck to comeShould I fear this year then? This final year of my forties, death knell to any far-fetched and barely-feasible semblance or pretending of youth? Maybe… maybe. Strangely it’s not fear I feel, nor the rush to get on with it. It’s really just another day, just another year, and the way we mark the days and years is just some silly system of numeric designation, as if 49 means something more than 48 or less than 50. There is nothing at all different today from yesterday – even if nothing is at all the same.
You keep hoping for a day
When things will go your way When all decisions have been made And karma’s finally found its wayThe drinks, they pass the time
They help me to unwind The guilt is killing me Inside your eyesIt’s gray, the rain pours down my face
The tears become erased A cleansing of my face Splashing down into my grinMy eyes become alive
A feeling left behind A hidden world untied Creating all you see todayThe clouds, they went away
Forever, did I wait And karma finally found my plate And now I’m smiling by the sunAnd so I step gingerly back into the river of life, the banks on which I have probably paused more than most – shy and skittish, scared and scarred from that moment of birth, and never quite having been able to get completely over it. I watched more of it go by than I ever took part in, and though it’s not regret I am experiencing, there is a sense of loss, even if I can’t be mad about it. It’s never helpful to be angry at who you used to be. Instead, I offer thanks, even for those days when I didn’t want to be part of it, when I swam to the shore, coughing and spitting out the anxiety, crying out the salty worry, spent and exhausted from trying to swim against the current. All these silly mixed metaphors have me feeling a little muddled, and what I originally wanted to be a contemplative birthday post has turned into something slightly different. The unexpected accident, the messy inconvenience of being human. What I most wanted life to be – something pretty, something perfect – is precisely what a human’s life can never be.