21 October 2019

Today I am 39.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a very long time to be alive at all. This is only half a lifetime in this day and age. Some people have never even made it beyond this point in their timelines. For instance, Dylan Thomas, the great alcoholic Welsh poet, died at 39.

Sorry. I’m not trying to be morbid. Let me start again.

Today I am 39.

I feel melancholy. There. I said it. I don’t feel particularly great or that this is a momentous occasion. I also feel tired, and sometimes my left elbow locks up so tight I have to crack it, firing off a noticeable “pop!” sound to the shock and delighted horror of people within earshot, and to a sense of temporary relief to myself. I should probably get that checked out.

Above all, I feel unmoored. Floating, or maybe flying slowly in a holding pattern. I’m sure part of it is to do with the changing weather, the cold settling in, the shortening of the days, the darkness coming earlier each night. But part of it is traveling around the sun one more time, and approaching the supposedly scary age of 40. Forty! It seems huge and shining, a city on some kind of a hill, or maybe the side of a hill at least. Forty feels full of possibilities and open doors.

But for today, I am 39.

It seems so anticlimactic. I don’t think many people get excited about 39. It’s a weird number. Just look at it. 39. It even sounds strange. Thirty-nine. Nine and thirty. Thirteen times three. Even broken down, it just sits there, looking back at me. There’s nothing special about it. My thoughts turn it over in my mind, like a rough stone in a tumbler. This one is going to be difficult to smooth. Too many sharp angles. It will probably take a year or so to become polished.

Today I am 39.

Despite my stupid anxiety monkey peanut brain, and the depressing thought of 39 rolling around in there, I feel like there’s something ahead. What it is, I don’t know. It’s kind of formless, without shape, vague as a dream. What’s behind feels over. Closed. The end. If there’s such a thing as a liminal space, there I am, right now.

For today, I am 39.

Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the time and the tempo fly
And there’s no exit in any direction
’Cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes
Wasn’t making any great connection
Wasn’t falling for any intricate scheme
Nothing that would pass inspection
Just thinking of a series of dreams

– “Series of Dreams,” Bob Dylan

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

– “and death shall have no dominion,” Dylan Thomas

Well, some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I’ve started out for God knows where
I guess I’ll know when I get there

– “Learning to Fly,” Tom Petty