44 & Counting
November 19, 2007
It’s my birthday. Not your birthday. And so I can say whatever I want to you. I’m older today. Another year older. 44-years old to be exact. I was born three days after John F. Kennedy was shot. I was still in the hospital with my mother when the news arrived. “The President has been shot,” the nurse told my mom and dad, who were too busy with my new life to think much of the new death. But I always think about death on my birthday. It’s only natural, I’m told. But, then again, I pay the man who tells me this. I sit across from him every two weeks to tell him the crazy things that I do. I try to shock him a little bit every time. But he just keeps saying: That’s normal. And it just keeps making me want to be less normal. What the fuck do I have to do? Oh hell, I’m just a normal guy who’s just another year older and who sits and thinks about death on his birthday.
It could be worse. I could be 45-years old like my brother, Todd. He’s a not-so-normal poet who thinks Iron Man Triathlons are what people should do for fun. Personally, I’d rather sit in the woods and watch the squirrels run. It’s easier. And normal, I’m told. Here’s the birthday poem full of childhood memories that I received this morning from Todd:
Happy Birthday
It’s your birthday
so I tried to get some
birds involved
and thick vanilla
frosting I even
stirred fudge
in the kitchen
with a broken candy
thermometer but
it thickened into
a go cart which
I rolled down the
hill because the
chain fell off
Mrs. Wigger’s car
I watched Tora Tora Tora
with a little
leather baseball glove
from Sears on my hand
I got a bike
and jumped over a ramp
into the void
of Brian the blind
kid down the block
he’s here now
he says hello
& I say hello
and happy birthday
to you my brother.
Love,
Todd
–
It’s my birthday. And so I’m going to do anything I want to do on my birthday. I’m going to start by sitting – and working — in the woods and watching the squirrels run. Then I’m going to ride a horse that probably shouldn’t be ridden. Then I’m going to do what I do every year on my birthday: Read a few of my favorite passages of Don Quixote. It reminds me to smile at confusion. And then I’ll be in the perfect mood to sit for a meal with my family.
Enjoy the day, my friends.
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What a self-promoting blog-turd. My Birthday was Nov. 12–last Monday. Guess I should have blogged it. But, since I was born in ‘48, my generation was raised to be more modest, humble, and Well-Mannered. So, JFK gets killed, and you get born. That’s a bigger conspiracy than 9/11. I probably shouldn’t have put that poem on Counterpunch this weekend–looks like some kind of half-assed birthday salute. Maybe I’ll post your birthday on GMD–then they can comment on it–”Stop The National Day Of Rudeness! Calling All Vigilers!”
Don Quixote? How ’bout Fred C. Dobbs in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, or Gentleman Brown In LORD JIM, Howard Roark in THE FOUNTAINHEAD, maybe even Satan in PARADISE LOST?
Don Quixote?–Shit, why not Jesus Christ in I’M ON A CROSS AND YOU WON’T EVEN GET ARRESTED!
And it’s the start of Thanksgiving week–”Have you no sense of decency sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” (guy name ‘a Welch said that, I believe)
I have to go puke now.
AND…Still think the anti-War group should occupy Douglas’ office–make the War and Douglas’ devotion to Bush a VERMONT ISSUE.
Or, invite him to meet with us at the library in Barre–same format–”Oh, how uncivil, you yelled at THE GOVERNOR!”