Hitting a Number and getting hit back

…and suddenly, Sex·a·ge·nar·i·an, a Noun on approach and a Valentine’s Day mini-manifesto.

The Chinese cycle of life and the year of the Monkey (yeah, go figure), 1956 and 2016. The Chinese believe that the only consequential birthdays are the first, the 10th, and yes, the…I can’t even count that far.

I suppose that it is the number itself that dispatches more cold shivers of reticent surprise. Surprise in knowing six decades are forever gone. This time has evaporated into little droplets which memory tries to catch on the tip of my tongue to quench the question of “but where?” I find, in searching within my moments of solitude, a sort of empty place, because the fear of not having achieved enough in that time is a blatant reality. Is this the winter of my discontent? I believe it is perhaps a winter and definitely not the winter. The cold, the damp, the creaks and groans of changing physiology plague me in its constant mirror of accepting the visage but is not as disquieting as the…forgetting. Forgetting the positives because being aware of the negatives of moving forward, I enter that faux epoch of life extension. It is too easy to go there. Therein lays the waste. Wasting my thought processes on searching for a way rather than enjoying the journey.
Where has the time gone? It is reckoned through countless colors, countless sounds, a smorgasbord of senses and interpretations of millions of voices, casks of tears and gut-wrenching laughter, astronomical highs and infernal lows. The middle ground of my memories hold all the grey areas; the forgotten moments of leisure or simple work. It also embraces acquaintance and sampling of palates of cultures, of noise that was not quite music. I’m sure I am missing something there, deciding what is important to forget or what is not relevant. It is all relevant. It is conscience and emotion kept in some place of limbo waiting to be fed upon. If, in fact, I can find this limbo, I will jump-start my memories of the sublime, the things that perhaps grounded the extremes of high and low, the center-mass that became my core from birth on. We all have a life of “greatest hits”, of life’s excursions and stories that may outlive us. They are the faces of time that we access to confirm success or purpose, especially when asked. If only I were invited to remember the mundane or rather the seeming eventless and fleeting moments within those 60 years I’m sure the thoughts of “where can I go from here” would not be such a cumbrous undertaking. As a matter of fact my choices are now actually reduced to the middle playing field because my questions are so quickly overwritten by a 5 year old and her agenda. That perhaps, is the only evidence needed as to which directions I shall ponder. It gives me that buffer of luxuriating in the remembrance of the little things, those snippets of individuality that I’ve misplaced like some receipt needed at the end of the year to explain what, why and with whom, to someone who is really not that interested in the context, but rather the fact that it exists. It is a number that dispatches. However, in that dispatch, is the license to further excel, to dream, to progress. Everyone has that overriding exclamation point in their lives. It is the realization as to what priority it will take in your decision making. This year my reason for remembering those “middle-memories” turns 6 years old. Perhaps that number, without the zero, is the direction giver. Perhaps all that I really need to do is jump in and enjoy the water. I forgot how to sink a long time ago but remain aware that chance could intervene, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be kicking and swimming. It’s all waitin’ upstream if you want it. It has been an adventure, and best of all not one that I could imagine. It is humbling to visit myself at 20 and ask myself my own views on 60. Since I have forgotten that submission, I’ll let it pass and make my own experienced rebuke in the present which would be “I’ve become a much better fisherman”.

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