21st

I guess I'm supposed to write something meaningful about looking back on a good life so far, and looking eagerly ahead towards the new vistas that have opened up with the passing of this birthday. But that would be too trite: and, essentially, if I were to mark the start of this era, it would be at the New Year or, more poetically in some ways, somewhere in Borneo. No, the passing of this birthday doesn't change anything essential. What it does is to throw everything into focus, outlining everything in its glorious, miraculous detail.

And I believe that the greatest thing about these twenty-one years is the people that I have met. I don't think I'll ever tire of saying this: I think I have been unbelievably lucky in the friends that I have met over the years, and in the people that have accompanied me through all these experiences, and made them even more meaningful by their sharing. Every greeting coming in in the mail and on the net means something to me: that even though we are separated by space and time, people still put in that extra effort, you know, to remember. It makes distance seem friendlier.

And the day itself was fantastic. Heh, mortifying in some ways, liberating in many others, reassuring in all. What was novel about this birthday was the use of the new vocabulary of alcohol to commemorate it. What was reassuringly familiar was the meaning that lay behind it. Various degrees of inebriation were the catalyst to continuing old conversations, and I am old-fashioned like that, seeing everything new in the context of what has come before, and where some people read the past as the vindication of the present, I use the present to confirm the past. Old conversations, old modes of talking, familiar places and solid, reliable assumptions: I read in these loyalty, closeness, dependability, commitment. Perhaps I read erroneously - but I this is how I read. But I could not think of a better way to mark the occasion, and I could not want for better company to mark it. And the fact that it became special even though I didn't even make any effort to make it special further amplifies the miracle of the day.

Yes, everything changes. Everything must, and should, change. Flux is fact. But despair at the fact is only a misperception of time passing. All things change, but not all at the same time, and the view that life is quicksand is only an optical illusion in your memory, lining up all the big changes next to each other and leaving out the solid but boring foundations of habit, ritual and tradition. And birthdays are reassuring to me in that way: in that they mark time passing, but they are a yearly tradition, and they are anchor points of personality in this way. I locate myself with the points of constancy in my memory.

In this way, then, I have found my 21st to be well passed, deeply touching and absolutely memorable. My deep thanks to everyone who passed it with me, indulging me in this once-a-lifetime night and day. My equally warm regards to everyone who remembered it and dropped a note. It makes me remember that I have a lot that I can recall thankfully, and bring with me into the next year, to face it bravely and openly. And would it be a hopeless romantic fallacy to say that this is the greatest gift that everyone could have given me on this, the most exhilarating brinks of Tomorrow and Elsewhere? Heh, I guess it is - but perhaps one last indulgence, for this writer, on the second day of his 21st?

*

But life goes on. After all, you only turn 21 once, and then after that you carry on with the person that you've been when you were 20. But life calls me forward. Will begin giving tuition next week, I think, and am on the brink of returning to CHS as a relief teacher for English.

Change creeps into my life like a thief or a lover. But a part of me still feels to young to grow older.