My birthdays have not tended to be the greatest.
As a kid, having my birthday right after the school year ended meant that I never had the big blowout birthday parties so many of my classmates did. I couldn’t exactly hand out invitations at school, and many families went away during those first few weeks of summer vacation.
My adult birthdays have generally been little better. In a low place the other night, I started giving names to some of my recent birthdays. In order that this not be a diatribe of held-over disappointment aimed at my friends and family, it’s possible that not all of these, um, actually happened:
The Year I Was Alone Because My Wife Went on Vacation. The Year the Locusts Came. Eight Years in a Row with George W. Bush as Our Nation’s President. The Year I Went Out to Celebrate with My Friends and Ended Up Buying My Own Dinner, Which Really Shouldn’t Have Been a Big Deal, but It Awakened Within Me Some Demons I Didn’t Realize Were There, and Man Oh Man Did They Feed. The Year the D.A. Declined To Press Charges. The Year My Friend the Professional Baker Made Me a Cake but Was Denied Entrance Into the Party. The Year That While I Was DJing at One Bar, My Girlfriend and Dear Friend Who Is Also a DJ Left to Get a Drink at a Totally Different Bar. The Year I Was Bitten by Not One but Two Snakes. The Year Humanity Vanquished the Great Evil that Has Plagued Us Since Time Immemorial.
(Wait. That last one shouldn’t be on the list. That one hasn’t happened yet. That one will actually be a pretty good birthday.)
My most fun birthday, hands down, was my 39th, two years ago. I was at Apogaea, the Colorado regional Burning Man festival. When I got to the Apotuckey Derby, which if you weren’t there you’ll just have to use your imagination, I realized I didn’t have to drink the crappy mint juleps they were offering, so I went back to my dome and made a delicious Manhattan. Then I realized that it was my birthday and I didn’t have to decide between Manhattans and gin tonics. Why not both?
Later, I invited every friend I could find into my dome and plied them with cocktails. Jan poked her head in at one point and offered me an edible. “They’re really mild,” she said. When you’ve been two-fisting Manhattans and gin tonics for hours the correct answer to that offer is, “No.”
Obviously I said yes.
Later, there was a burlesque show at Center Camp and I watched my new friend CJ totally rock it and it was awesome.
And not long after that, I tried several times to tie a bow tie and, for reasons you can probably deduce, failed. In frustration, I lay down on my bed and let’s call it took a nap as darkness was falling. Robin woke me up gently and sweetly some hours later.
Here is the place where the tone of this part of the piece changes. It had been an awesome birthday, but I awakened to a different energy than I’d fallen asleep to. I felt a pervasive feeling of melancholy, and after some reflection, realized it wasn’t just the result of having partied all day. It wasn’t just me that was feeling it. The whole festival had a subdued air that night. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced at a festival before. I wouldn’t understand it until a few days later (and even then I would question if what I was thinking was possible), on Tuesday the 11th, when in the desert outside Grand Junction the search team found Nolus’s body.
Like I said, my birthdays have kinda been a mixed bag.
So today’s my birthday. Right now, I am somewhere between Boulder and Gig Harbor, WA. I’m scheduling this post well ahead of time so that I can give myself over to whatever adventures come my way.
I miss and love you all, and though I’m writing this days in advance, I’m going to say anyway: It’s beautiful here. I’m having a great time.