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On Turning 45 and Not Knowing Birds or Trees or Flowers
Happy birthday to me; happy birthday to me.
Thornton Wilder wrote in the immortally painful Our Town that, “every child born into the world is nature’s attempt to make a perfect human being.” On May 12, 1980, nature tried and failed, probably many times. But, as they say in kindergarten classes all over the world, “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Maybe less poetic than Wilder; but it’s still true enough.
In case you haven’t guessed, I turn 45 tomorrow, and I don’t know why that fact brought me to the laptop today, but it did, so we might as well deal with that. I think I’ve written other things on other birthdays, but I’m too afraid to go looking for those things. I’m as scared of what I’ve written, said, and done in the past as I am about what I may write, say, or do in the future. Isn’t it a lyrical thing to see depression and anxiety slowfucking each other like that in such irreverent harmony?
When I pull back the camera and take a look at the wide-shot in the editing booth, I see so much in disrepair. So much in my family of origin, so much in the world, so much in my head — so, so much in my head. There is splintered wood and fragments of dishes and ice cubes and cold start injector valves and baking ingredients and mismatched paint and a ferocious longing for closeness an…