“It takes a long time to become young.” Pablo Picasso
I got a story I want to tell you about my upcoming birthday and whatever gets snagged in the net of memory and emotion. No, I am not about to do some fucked up left turn, getting into a whole different space before I get going, but I got a quick one.
I was walking up the hill, with my brand new Beats Studio Buds stuck in my ears, also part of the real story in a couple of paragraphs. Dock of the Bay exploded in my head, only the way these magical, little buttons can do. I was pounding my way up the hill and instantly caught that my right foot was keeping perfect time with Otis. I was marching to this incredible music, feeling like a dance of purpose.
As someone, who spills his business on the page, I am incredibly shy, I mean incredibly shy, a physical inhibitor and source of discomfort. When I decided to starting writing to my grandson nearly twelve years ago, I had no idea I would be doing this so many years later. I also had no idea I would be sharing myself this way. To my ongoing surprise, I truly love doing it, my dance with you.
All the way back to October 31, 2011, what I lovingly started, quickly became an obsessive-compulsive, blind-as-a-bat, need to write, even thinking about it, when I am not doing it. I decided to take a quick look at May 29, 2015 and see what I had to say. Not surprisingly, I have had something to say about it, every May since then. I know you don’t give a shit, but I have zero interest in some repetitious, semi-sanctimonius, quasi-revelatory rehash of those little ditties. Wait, I could call it, “Larry’s Best Birthday Stories, 2015-2023.
I try and do the best I can to let you know about life in my late seventies, which can really be a bitch, although no reason why it’s any harder for me than any other age. I suspect one of the dangers of seniority is thinking you’re any fucken different than the burgeoning, minions below. I spend most of my days around people, less than half my age. They ain’t coming up to me yet, because they don’t know the way. I enter their world and I am welcomed, medicine for an old soul.
Well, crap, now I am walking down Main Street in Tombstone, heading to that OK Corral in the sky. I don’t think Wyatt Earp believed he would die there and he didn’t. In my movie, it is not the climactic scene I am looking for, primarily because I have a very low budget.
We now have a dramatically stripped down version of that cinematic extravaganza. It’s our hero, that would be me, sitting where he always seems to find himself every goddamn Friday evening. I got some complicated shit to lay down, but that’s for later. There are some highlights from the past year I am carrying forward into the coming one.
I probably have to start with my hair. I’m not sure when I decided to just let it grow, but it had to be months and months ago. It is just dumb luck that I’ve got some serious hair. I know it doesn’t make me a better person, trust me. Most guys have no idea what a pain in the ass it is, but I am enjoying it. The main reason for me is that I have gotten just enough compliments to bring it on home. I don’t care who you are, vanity is always there, lurking in the shadows, but quick to hijack your senses.
Sometime, around the beginning of this year, I began walking and fishing. I know they came from the same place, wanting to make more of a point of being out in the world, whatever it looked like. it’s funny, they feel inseparable, because they are. Each one introduced me to myself in brand new ways and it has been energizing. I have a blast, pounding the pavement, whenever I feel like, usually to and from work. On the other end, fishing hooks into a wonderful stillness, moments of calm, one cast after the next. Music is inseparable from both.
I am always falling in love with music, going into a mind swoon over slices of my living soundtrack. The aforementioned Buds have intensified my life long, deeply intimate affair with this syncopated, Language of the Gods.
I had the last pendant I will wear the rest of my life designed by the wonderful lady, who created my grandson’s silver, encrusted makau. It is my warrior’s armor for the years ahead. If you care, it is a silver-carved, eternal knot, gifted to me years ago in Santa Fe. A sweet, little Emerald tear-drop now rests at the top.
I think a lot about my age and I’d be a lousy liar if I claimed I am at peace with it all. Many years ago, I know for certain I was drawn to Zen Buddhism, because it offered an invisible map to the stars, only seen when your out-of-focus gaze is internalized, ass bound on the cushion. Too much has been written about explaining the unexplainable by countless, erudite practitioners, that’s why there are so many damn books and theories.
Faith has no words to explain itself. I have come to believe in the unfathomable idea that absolutely nothing occurs anywhere, at any time, without impacting everything that has happened before and will happen in the limitless future. Maybe, I am being a bit too bold in my positivity, as I get closer to the launch pad. Shit, it sounds like a good idea from here, doesn’t it? Honest to God, that is my mountain to keep climbing until I run out of mountain and words, embracing the continuum of all existence.
I got some near term coming attractions, too. I am going to get another tattoo on my left shoulder, across from that same, eternal knot on my right. It will be another Buddhist symbol, one of the lotus, a tribute to beauty coming forth from a pond of choking mud.
I am going up to Alaska in August and I will be the writer I sometimes dream about. I visualize a painter, palette at the ready, naked canvas resting on a tripod, dazzled by nature’s majesty, praying he can capture it all, almost all.
Leapfrogging my 79th, I’ve got a rock solid plan for the 80th. Before the evil pandemic froze us all, I was planning a very cool road trip, something I miss on this postage stamp. I was going to visit friends in Vancouver. Then, rent a car and head straight east into the Kootenay Mountains, to a killer location. Sure as shit, that’s what I’m doing and my grandson is coming with me.
I’m nearly done, but while we’re on the subject of birthdays, the greatest gift I’ve ever received is Shane. I can’t get anywhere near telling you what he means to me, it is between us.
Something happened earlier in the week. I knew it was going to close my story, before I even had a fucken idea what the story was going to look like. I met a person I have known for many years, while picking up some spicy chicken curry. I bent down to greet her at her table and she touched her forehead to mine. This is no wannabe, this is a person with serious cultural creds, an incredibly lovely human being. No one has ever greeted me this way before.
I got to my car as fast as I could and balled my eyes out. Thinking about it now, days later, elicits the same flood of tears. This was my birthday gift. I felt like a time-worn warrior, being touched by Excalibur, becoming a Kauai Knight of The Realm.
I am home and one year older.