or, a cliched session of indulgent navel-gazing

Twenty-nine years ago today, around quarter-after-ten in the morning Pacific time, I was brought screaming into this world. Those who know me would likely say I have yet to shut up. Sadly, this may be the case – too much talking, not enough doing, or for that matter writing.

I stare down the last year of my twenties, the last of my nominal prime, with a Janus face, looking forward to soften the disappointments behind, and to sweeten my own morbidity. I consider at once the smallness of life, my own smallness; the beauty of life, and my own youth. Perished chances, things not done; things to do, chance arriving. It’s excruciatingly banal. I suppose life is rather banal, after all, though I despise myself for saying so. Maybe that’s a good resolution: resist banality. How nauseautingly trite.

The most haunting image of a man in crisis over his youth is not Alexander, weeping that he has no more worlds to conquer. It is Caesar, weeping that he has not wrought anything memorable by the same age as the Macedonian. I am not sure if I find this crushing, inspiring, or simply anachronistic – the species of classical ambition and greatness it recommends is, as far as I can tell, long extinct. But the existential pressure it exerts is immense, and scales down to all ordinary men who wish they were something more than common. It is a good question, “What have I accomplished?” but it doesn’t do anything more than relight a fire that should have been burning anyhow. The next question must of course be “What do I want to accomplish?” – this is setting the pot on the fire, whether it was there before or not.

So, the pot is on the fire. This year must be about gathering meat and vegetables for the broth, and keeping the flame stoked.