Now I'm Sixty-Four

I’m wondering how long it has been that I have been celebrating my birthday with some form of assessment of the year past and a hope for the year to come. I know that throughout my journal writings there are missives to myself using my birthday as some kind of trail marker, though rarely do I reread them and make any judgment. Or even look for some direction. These reflections seem rather as rhetorical pauses where I stop to note what happened here. Historical trail markers along the side of the road. 

It was the Beatles who identified sixty-four as the significant age: the narrator wondered (ironically and seriously) whether when he turned sixty-four if “you” would still need and feed him. Well, I am not at present losing my hair, though it does appear to be thinning somewhat; I do like my wine, and though renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight doesn’t appeal to me, the idea of the apartment in the Cities makes me happy. But if I have to be in my sixties, I’d prefer to be sixty-six and collecting social security. 

I think at this juncture I am reviewing the situation. I have no interest in retirement, but neither do I have any desire to climb Everest to prove my vitality.  Not in over my head but treading water nonetheless. Now I find myself awaiting something onto which I can direct my passion, and trying to bring to fruition those projects on which I have spent some passion for the past several years. The books pile up by the bedside. And I watch episodes of Joan of Arcadia and Mad Men. I love the former. As for the latter, I really don’t like any of the characters—except maybe Peggy—and I find it hard to believe that men who drink all day the way those men do could be still standing by 3:00pm. At sixty four my tolerance has declined though the pleasure remains. 

And so on this birthday, I celebrate the Muses I have enjoyed and await the Muse who will reside with me next.  And celebrate the wine sent from a dear, dear friend.