This is an American tale. Today I turn 30 and if you had asked me a few months ago what I felt about this in-some-ways arbitrary, in-some-ways significant pivot point, I would have told you that it was no big deal, that our age was a state of mind, that I felt younger now than I did when I was 25. But that is not the case today. I am buzzing and electric with a kind of rage. Not anger rage. Not exasperated rage. More like ELATION rage.
A little over 2 years ago I took the path less traveled, and even though I have never been the biggest Robert Frost fan, it seems that his words are so embedded in our collective unconscious that what I did then, and how I perceive it now, could not be accurately described with referencing that old sage of American poetry. As some of you know I have written poetry for many years and can now see that I always will, just as I will always write essays, and book reviews, and notes on film, and art and music. And I will continue to blog because blogging is what I do and a very big part of who I am. The immediacy, the casual nature of it, sometimes even the looseness of the form, the fact that I can sit down without an argument or a point and just write and that somewhere, out there, there are readers, and fans, and followers, and colleagues and peers and people I respect, that might see it, and actually enjoy it. And not mind much that I sat down without a fig of an idea of what or how I was going to say it, but just that I wanted to express myself anyway.
I don’t have any major life pronouncements to make, predictions to gamble on, deadlines to hit, or any other obligations that I can see.
But I do feel the pivot happening. I do feel childhood and adolescence and young adulthood receding. There it goes. Like a wave in high tide that washes in, that slaps the sand with its crunch and its sleekness, spreading out among the particles, picking up stray bits of crab and shell, of sea weed and kelp and other marine vegetation, brooming across the beach, and then, hanging there, suspending for a second, it begins to pull away. To go back into the rolling blue ether of time. To join all the other childhoods and adolescences. To smash them together, rubbing their mass together, all the laughter and pain and joy and horror, the tragedy and the elation spuming together in a spray of foam and air and total complete effervescence.
Until that mass lifts and disintegrates into time and space and place.
Image courtesy of on Flickr
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Written by TS Elliot, age 29
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Happy Birthday Home Boy
Peter
Reply
I love to see and read someone as beautifully alive as you, at only 30. When I was turning 30 I had 2 little ones, and not a clue. At 40, 2 medium, 1 little and not much more of a clue. And when I turned 50 (or leading up to it) my life broke open. (yes- I’m 51. How the fuck does this happen? My only consoling thought is that we all have the same rate of speed towards death.) And now, Zack? I am younger than I ever was. So if you feel yourself piling on the responsibilites and growing your life in all the expected ways- just remember you will get to a place of sheer freedom. But hey. You sound like you already are. Love your stuff. Thanks for you. Happy Birthday. (my post here- my bday present! http://idanceiwrite.com/on-turning-50-becoming-myself-and-taking-it-all-off-3.html )
Reply
For my 30th birthday I plan to invite a few of the girls who are in my current rotation to a club and propose an orgy in a unisex bathroom.
Reply
Don’t worry, the drive will come back when you’ve shed the doubts you have about turning 30.
I had the same feelings when I turned 30, almost thinking I was depressed which was only due to the fact that the bottle of Scotch was on the other side of the room
Happy belated Birthday.
Reply
thanks dude!!
Reply