According to my memory...
(...Which may just as well belong to some other person, whose brain was once dissected into two neat halves, one of which was placed inside me while the other lives on in it's original body. Are this person and I then the same? If all we are is the sum total of our past experiences, this fiction of the Self that we create by stringing together stories collected through the senses, and remembered through photographs - then, yes. Were this person then to meet me and fall in love with my charming physical exterior coupled with their mental being, would this be the ultimate act of narcissism or of self-loathing? But that's enough fantasizing for now.)
So where was I. Oh yes, according to my memory, I've always been the sort of person who starts getting excited about their birthday six months before it actually arrives. I usually subject my mother and anyone else patient enough to put up with this sort of idiocy to a monster countdown...
"FIFTY SIX DAYS TO GO! ARE YOU EXCITED? ARE YOU???"
And the strange thing is, the excitement was never anti-climactic, for me anyway. No matter what I did on past birthdays seemed just perfect. Or rather, it didn't matter what did, because the day just felt so fucking special from the moment I woke up.
Here I am. It's less than forty eight hours away from what I used to herald with as much enthusiasm as the second coming of Christ...and I'm about as thrilled as Immanuel Kant, and roughly as much fun to talk to (i.e. No Fun At All).
The idea that I am perhaps too old, jaded and cynical to manufacture the required amount of adrenaline for my birthday this year keeps seeming dangerously possible.
That can't be it though.
I don't feel that old. I'm still full of plans of world domination and the delights of debauchery like any self respecting Young Adult. Numbers never DID make that much of a difference to me (Stop with the hissing, Pythagoras.)
WHY then, to the chagrin of my friends and The Marquis (purveyor of endorphins and dopamine) am I unable to muster even a wan smile thinking about Tuesday? What is this mysterious miasma that is suffocating my usual birthday cheer?
I feel like asking you to tune in to the same bat-channel at the same bat-time, but the truth is I may never figure out what's going on and be able to offer you a cathartic resolution - of - conflict type post.
Agony Aunt services are welcome. Uncles are a bit creepy, but mustachioed Beatniks will do too.
Ciao.
3 comments:
:)
Have a happy birthday-eve, SQN.
In keeping with the current rage:
HUG!
You could always have a blast on Monday. Or Wednesday. Or Tuesday:) Birthdays are parties, we had it right when we were kids. Or alone time, whatever works. Just...have a great great year. Full of smiles.
Hey, just found my way to your blog.. (by way of explanation as to why I'm commenting on a month old post )
The funny thing is, forty-eight hours before my birthday (also the 9th of march :) ) I sat down and wrote something very very similar... And it's positively uncanny .
I just turned 23 and only the fact that I am far away from home and close friends held me back from all the usual fanfare and build-up - can't be silly with people you know for five months.
Birthdays always held such anticipation, even if all it meant was a couple of presents and a meal out with the folks. It always feels like MY day right from the second I open my eyes.
The way I look at it is, you're never to old to feel boundless joy.. even if it is about 'just another day' .
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