--I DON'T WANT TO PERISH LIKE A FADING HORSE

…Today is my birthday and I’m okay with that.  I’m fine with it, in fact.

For all of my life I’ve hated my birthday.  When I was young it was because we were poor and my friends always wanted to know what presents I got and so I would end up lying.
Then later it was just about aging.
Yesterday one of my son’s friends asked me how it felt to be one more year closer to death.  He was being funny, but the question made my mind go there.
Today my best friend sent this note:

…How did we get so fucking old?  How did the past 30 years go by so fast?  How much more we got left?  Yesterday I learned that a lawyer acquaintance of mine suddenly dropped dead.  I just saw him at that Everett trial in March.  He was, um, 53.  Ouch.

Anyway, have an excellent day….

In the old days, I would hear that and jump right in, but maybe I’m getting soft or smart or more optimistic.

What I’ve realized about birthdays is that it’s nice to be noticed and appreciate, even the superficial stuff like Facebook Friends that you don’t even know sending you good wishes.  Even that feels kind of nice. 

I’ve learned that it’s okay to let people celebrate you.  It’s perfectly fine.

…I’m currently reading Matt Potter’s collection, “Vestal Aversion” and “War Dances” by Sherman Alexie and “The Unnamed” by Joshua Ferris and “Ordinary People” for the third time.  Each book is terrific and completely different from each other.  It’s going to be a struggle for me to make it to 100 books this year, but I’ll try.

…I was in the mall today.  There was a record store there.  It made me smile.  Inside they mostly had movies for sale, DVD’s.  They were selling most of them for $5.00.  You can kind of see the writing on the wall.  But I guess that’s okay.  Things change.  Things die and are reborn in different forms or versions, not like reincarnation, but more like the tape replaces the record while the tape is replaced by the IPod, etc.

…I’m going to watch “Crash.”  It’s one of my favorite films and I often find myself thinking about the clever way it tackles stereotypes and racism. 

...Before I go, I’ll leave you with these things I like:

"The essence of intelligence would seem to be in knowing when to think and act quickly, and knowing when to think and act slowly." Robert Sternberg

“All men contain several men inside themselves, and most of bounce from self to the other without ever knowing who we are.” Paul Auster

"I have enjoyed life a lot more by saying 'yes' than by saying 'no.' Richard Branson

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change."  William Burroughs

"In utter loneliness, the writer tries to explain the inexplicable." Steinbeck