david taus

Quarter-Century

music: mix tape I made in middle school and found today

Today is my birthday. Today I turn 25 years old.

I used to very much look forward to the 24th of December; I used to wake up earlier than I ever would otherwise. I used to feel like the king of the world on my birthday, that I could do no wrong, that I was the center of the universe. Now not so much.

I spent the day very much by myself, fixing myself some breakfast, working a little bit on my book research on solitude, and experiencing the solitary life on top of that. As this is some sort of temporal marker, I thought it appropriate to take some time to indulge in some cerebral exploration and reflection on some aspects of the past 25 years I have spent on the planet.

I found myself spending the majority of the day (a good 10 hours) going through all my remaining material possessions stored in various corners of the house, saving some of the most important or representative documents and artifacts, but throwing out most. A quarter-century is a good amount of time to do a little purging and tidying up. This was my project for the day: unpacking, sorting, disposing, reorganizing, and repacking what remained. There isn’t much left-just enough to fill four big tupperwares and three clothes drawers. It feels good to get rid of all this stuff that has been sitting there. Granted, what remains will just sit there, but it will take up less room. This is a second major downsizing of my worldly possessions. The first was largely involuntary: my room in the basement flooded about two years ago and mom was forced to dismantle my room and in doing so threw out a lot of my stuff. Today I finished what she started, and now I’m happy to say that the majority of my material possessions are in Boston. Which amounts to just over two carloads-not a bad figure as far as my anti-consumer personal goals are concerned.

Mom invited my grandma and aunt and uncle over for dinner tonight for a “party,” but she came down with a fever and had to call it off, which was fine by me. I was happy to be left to myself for the majority of the day and surround myself with piles and piles of artifacts from my past. We had a normal family dinner, i got a generous check from my mom and grandma (the latter via mail), and then my sisters went off to party with their friends, the ‘rents went to bed, and I did the dishes. It didn’t even feel like a birthday, which is, i guess, what I was aiming for.

I don’t know when I started to dislike my birthday so much, although I think it was around 14. Around that point, I think it registered on some abstract level that time was moving in one direction and that I was only getting older. Moreover, that I would never have back the time that had already come. The future will inevitably come, I reasoned, why celebrate it? At the same time, the past is growing larger and larger and I am slipping farther and farther away from childhood. This isn’t something I really want to celebrate. I wouldn’t mind getting older if it didn’t mean that I would be less young, if it didn’t mean that I was inching closer to death. My life is most likely about than 1/3 over, if I’m lucky, and the (arguably) most exciting times are behind me. That’s not something to celebrate. Will there be good in the future? Of course. But it is to come, and I don’t think I have to celebrate that.

Rather, I find myself feeling sad that the past is growing larger. Every birthday I have I try to wrap my head around the previous year and I end up with more regrets than I originally thought I might have. I should have taken that impulsive midnight drive to the middle of nowhere. I should not have slept so much. I should have splurged and gone to that concert. I should have kissed the girl at the end of the night. And the like. But, of course, nothing can be done about it now. 24 is done, and the best I can do is try to follow through during 25. For tonight, though, I sift through these tangible reminders of who I’ve been and what I’ve done for the past quarter-century, and am reminded of where I have to go. And this time ‘round, where I have to go is back into the stacks of books waiting for me upstairs. This time ‘round, my task is to find some intellecutual solace in the concept of solitude.

Towards the end of the night I got a surprise happy birthday call from M., vacationing with her extended family in Florida, and on her way with her family to midnight mass, no less. It was my only birthday call besides my grandparents. She is a sweetheart.

K., a dear friend, wrote out a poem for me for one of my birthdays-my 15th or 16th. That was 10 years ago, it occurs to me. She is an important figure in my own history: my first real crush, my first kiss, all that. I was not sure what she was aiming for by giving me this poem, but today, as I unearthed the tattered half-sheet from piles upon piles of personal history, I realized that she was trying to tell me something about myself that I somehow didn’t grasp back then. At the time it was about me in relation to her, but it can be generalized. I might have only fully grasped the lesson recently. But the poem (and K.’s intentions in giving it to me way back when) seemed to align themselves neatly with today’s predicament: turning a quarter-century old and not liking it, and reconciling solitude with personal experience. Happy birthday to me.

“The Snow King”
by Rita Dove

In a far far land where men are men
and women are sun and sky
The Snow King paces. And light throws
a gold patina on the white spaces
where sparrows lie frozen in hallways.

And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers:
Where is the summer that lasts forever,
with night as soft as antelope eyes?
The Snow King roams the lime-filled spaces
his cracked heart a slow fire, a garnet.

Posted by davidtaus at December 24, 2003 11:42 PM