Where's My Red Corvette And The Naked Model?

I'm 40 years old today.  The popular thing to do on a fortieth birthday is to prove you are having your midlife crisis (such as by buying penile red vehicles you can't afford and fill 'em up with under-dressed virtually busty "blond" women who don't know you can't afford 'em either), then put on a hair shirt for past guilt, and finally lose yourself in a great moribund philosophical drink-fest. 

So I should probably sit in my driveway and wait for the hammer of death to claim me now that it's all pretty much over anyway.

Either that or I should join a cult.  But there aren't any spectacular cults around here and I can't commute to one now that my scooter is out of commission.  Besides, I'm in no mood for complete submission to unhinged crazy people.

When I was fifteen I was convinced I would not be alive for my thirtieth birthday (mostly because I was planning to kill myself, but I also figured that if I didn't do the deed myself I would surely get murdered.) so when I turned thirty I was genuinely surprised and kind of impressed by what a rotten fortune teller I turned out to be.

I'd like to say I've been living with a lot of grace and that I am a triumphant kind of 40.  I'd like to tell you all kinds of lies about what a hero I've been; how I took cardboard and made gold shoes out of it and other truly American-style lies, but I've invested way too many hours telling you the truth, so that now you will believe no lies from me.  Inconvenient for me.

One of the things I have been most sensitive about myself is my propensity to talk excitedly (and at some length) about all the interesting things I observe and the thoughts that life has sparked which I assume it has sparked in others only to find that most people find my chatter exhausting, particularly when it grows dark.  Being told to shut up has become my bete noire.  Being shut down, shut off, and generally silenced has become the most damaging experience to my fragile connection to the corporeal world.  This is why my blogs save my life.  If I want to rhapsodize about the superiority of home grown potatoes and how they make me feel like a kid digging for treasure, I can't see your boredom.  You can't shut me off.  This is the one place where I can say everything with an epic sweep of words.

Therefore, because it is my birthday, and I'm 40 years old, I will now share all my wisdom with you at once and with 100% randomosity:

1.  When you plan your own death, always think about the person who will have the misfortune to find you.

2.  Don't listen to people who tell you to live each day as though it was your last, or to enjoy every single minute of your child's babyhood because it goes by so fast.  That is a whole lot of pressure.  You will enjoy yourself, your family, and your life a lot more if you aren't worried about "making the most of every minute".  Relax.  It only goes by fast in retrospect.  The truth is (and write this one on the wall): every year has exactly 365 days in it (more or less), every month has 4 weeks in it (more or less), and every week has 7 days in it (exactly!), and every day has 24 hours in it, and every hour has exactly 60 minutes in it, and every minute has precisely 60 seconds... and this remains true whether you are 9 years old feeling like everything takes FOREVER or you are 60 and thinking the years have passed by you like a blur.  It never changes.  Time is constant.  Our perception of it is the only thing that changes.  So relax and tell people to leave you the hell alone.

3.  Be kind to others because it is simultaneously a kindness to yourself which means that everyone wins.  How often does that happen?

4.  Shakespeare may have been a bit of a lofty long-winded ass but he got some things irrefutably right and the one point on which we are in complete agreement is: To thine own self be true  (etc, etc, etc...).  Sometimes in life it is necessary to camouflage ourselves and hide truths from others for our own safety, and I don't say this is to be celebrated, but it is a much worse crime to lie to yourself or to try to be someone you're not. 

5.  Forgiveness is cathartic, difficult, and one of the most important things you can do to grow as a person and to find both peace and happiness.  forgiveness isn't a promise to forget.  Everything we experience has a rightful place in our memory, adds context to who we are, and is engraved in our spirits.  But to hold onto anger and disappointment in others is like a cancer in our lives.  You must release it or it grows.  I'm not gonna lie, it's one of the hardest things to do, so just keep working towards it until you get there.

6.  Money may not buy happiness, but it pays for all the things that keep us warm, fed, safe, and comfortable.  I like all those things.

7.  One of my favorite memories is standing in the center of rows of beans on a local farm in my "peace" apron, a bucket at my dusty feet, and my headphones on so that I could block out all other sounds with music which helps me see, smell, and touch everything as though it was in technicolor.  The colors of the beans contrasted with the hard dirt at my feet.  My fingers were covered in the grime of picking. My bucket was filling.  I felt the early fall rush of breeze on my face turned to the weakening sun and I could have stood there forever, and been happy.  I love the symmetry of the rows of growing food; the outward reaching that farmland makes me feel more free and light; and it was all a folksong really.

8.  Go ahead and get excited about happy little things that make you feel like a ripe pomegranate splitting open in the sun rich with juice and seeds.  Go ahead and be passionate about your cup of coffee, the rare rose you nurse in the garden, the smell of wild blackberries heavy sweet on the summer air, the feeling of a screw ripping into wood as straight as you intended.  It isn't the big things that we really hold onto as much as it is the million tiny pleasures and little fractions of light.  Don't let anyone tell you these details are insignificant and unworthy of conversation.

9.  Don't suffer abuse.  Get help.  Get away.  Get strong.  Real love is never violent.  Real love is not explosive and harmful.  If someone you love is constantly hurting you (in any way) then they don't really love you.  People get frustrated with each other and there will be arguments, negotiations, and maybe once in a while a genuine wish to do violence to your loved ones, but if you really love a person you won't assault them in any way nor shred their emotional health.  I believe this.  I believe this with my entire being. 

10.  If you aren't ready to have children then either don't have sex at all or, more reasonably, protect yourself suitably.  Any god who objects to people preventing unwanted pregnancies is not a god worth worship.  There are few things that sadden me more than babies being born to indifferent, or worse, resentful parents.  My youth was plagued by dreams of rescuing all the babies that were thrown away in this world.

11.  Don't think I won't know you got a lip job. 

12.  Read.  Read a lot.  Read books.  Read some classics.  Read some trash.  Read some poetry.  Read some humor.  Read because it is a privilege and a pleasure.  It will open your eyes and present new thoughts.  


11.  Don't keep score in any of your relationships.  It is a useless past-time that will deteriorate any relationship that engages in it.  It is a disease for which there is only one cure: stop doing it!

12.  If I put two plates of food in front of you and pointed to one and told you it had been grown using toxic chemicals, and then pointed to the other and told you that it hadn't been sprayed with anything and asked you which one you would prefer to eat, would you choose the food that had been exposed to toxic chemicals?  Think about it.  So many of us have money concerns and maybe we can't always afford to buy organic, but if money wasn't a concern, is there anyone who would honestly choose the plate of poison?  Let that guide you as much as it can.

13.  Sing, play, or listen to music.  It is the human heartbeat.  I don't care what music you listen to, not even if it's Twisted Sister, but just let yourself loose in it.  I am no singer but when I am alone washing dishes I used to sing to myself and I can only describe the songs I sung as dirges but it came up from a good place and the notes vibrate in your chest bones and make it all feel right.  Do it.  In the shower, with friends, or on a mountaintop. 

14.  Lip service sucks.  Don't give lip service to anything you can't also give body service to.  If you can't live it then don't say it.

15.  Unless you're being sarcastic.

16.  There is no excuse for adultery.  You want to get around?  Be free?  No one is stopping you but yourself if you get shackled up.  Getting married or becoming exclusive are not passive life experiences, they're ones you either sign up for or you don't.  If you find you've made a mistake there's no reason you can't undo it before betraying your partner.  There is no excuse.

17.  Stop wearing pants 2 sizes two small for you.

18.  Star-crossed lovers piss me off.

19.  You want to get up close and personal to what life is really about?  Dig a grave.  There is ache in that unsalted muscle.  There are rocks in that hole.  Do it.  Dig a deep grave and lay some being you've loved in it and you'll learn almost everything you need to know.

20.  I will let everyone in my house but bigots and racists.

21.  You can't have everything.  Fact of life.  No one can have everything.  There is always payment outside of coin for every inch.  Know what is most important to you and what you're willing to pay for it.

22.  The accordion is better than a sly hipster trend.  The accordion speaks for people with an almost human voice.  It fills the chill on cold nights and reminds us of something elemental.

23.  Bagpipes are even more elemental and though often compared to the sound dying cats might make (mine didn't sound at all like bagpipes), they speak of war, like the human heart, beating blood through impossible channels and building courage where there is only bleak bravado.

24.  There is no excuse for war.

25.  No matter how mad you make me I will never want to hurt you or your children.

26.  I hear you all while you're sleeping.  I'm not the only one.  Your pain is not unheard even when you think it is.  I need to remember this myself.

27.  Always put your socks on last.  Unless you wear hats.  Hats should always come on after socks and shoes.

28.  Don't watch "Titanic" on your birthday.

29.  Immortality is exhausting.  I have no desire to live forever.  I will be satisfied with whatever I get.

30.  Even when you feel like taking a nap and not waking up until it's time to die, you need to get up.  Every day.  One foot in front of the other.

31.  The underdog will come through.  I have to believe it.  You have to believe it too so I won't be alone believing and hoping.

32.  Learn to trust yourself.  Everything else will follow.

33.  Run completely wild sometimes.  Out in the woods or at the mouth of the ocean. 

34.  If you've got to be a super villain and kill people, don't leave the bodies to rot in your own house.  It looks just as suspicious as you'd expect it to if you had a fraction of a brain. 

35.  I will wear a cape soon.

36.  Even when I'm not telling you the precise truth, I know that my truth is always close to the surface for anyone to see who has their eyes open.  And so is yours.

37.  We have right now.  It's all we really own for sure.

38.  Never lose touch with your humility.  Your willingness to learn, to be wrong, to have new ideas, to take to new directions.  It's called evolution.

39.  Everyone has something worthy to share with us all if only they might give a shit enough to give it. 

40.  Hello 40.  Where's my red corvette and the naked model to put in it?