MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons
I will be 39 years old tomorrow
April 27, 1967.
I suppose in many parts of the world,
I am already 39...in alternate realities.
But alas, here in La La Land, I have one hour
and 50 minutes to enjoy the final minutes
of being 38
The irony of turning 39 does not escape me
I have fully shed the confines of youth
and now I succumb to the word, the world
of 'adult'
Is this middle age? I suppose if I live to be 78 it is
If I take after my grandmothers, 94 (RIP) and 92
I have a few more years to reach that beloved rite of passage
(she says sarcastically)
What were my grandmothers like at 39? My father's mother
was just getting married for the first time...a very strange thing for her day
My mother's mother had a 13 year old, my mother, and a six year old, my aunt
I have two beautiful, gorgeous, smary, funny, cats
I could not love them more if I tried.

So yes, I will be 39 in a few hours.
And yet, and yet.
In the dark corners of my mind
I am five years old asking my mum
"Am I going to die?"
What kind of five year-old asks that?
She said gently, "Yes, but not for a long, long, long time."
That seemed to comfort me, but she said I still seemed bothered.
Ah yes, the beginning of my odd? realistic? fatalistic? obsession with death.
Funny, I am 34 years closer to that reality
but I am not obsessed with it much anymore.
Too much has happened. I have buried too many people;
young friends at 19, dead in motorcycle accidents
My father, dead from a broken heart, a broken body;
a suicide they called it. But I know the truth.
Twelve years of chronic pain - no I don't fear the reaper
but I do fear suffering, for I know the price you pay
for that trade-off.

I am seven years old, outside our house
It is cold, a November eve, and I am playing with the neighborhood kids
My mother calls us in
There is a fire in the fireplace and the house smells like
spaghetti
It is warm and comforting. I am safe and always will be. Everything is O.K.

I am eight years old taking my first plane ride to Hawai'i
The first and last time I won't be scared on a plane
Thanks mom!
And we visit almost all the islands
I taste real sugar cane; it isn't sweet
I lie awake at night at listen to the cane bugs
We visit Pearl Harbor and I stare down at the oil slick
hovering like a ghostly apparition on the water above the U.S.S. Arizona
and I am silent.

I am nine years old
and my brother and I sit at the top of the stairs
on Christmas morning
it is barely 5a.m. but we are so excited
SO EXCITED! we can barely contain ourselves
as we slowly crawl down one stair at a time
and glimpse the brightly wrapped packages
I am simply going to BURST!!!!!!
spilling out over the carpet in the living room
Our parents begging off, "Five more minutes, five more minutes..."
Now it is my mother who has to drag us out of bed on Christmas morning.

I am 10 years old and my father, my crazy father
Has dragged us to some theater in Century City on a hot June day
to see some stupid movie called Star Wars
and two hours later I am in love
with a man named Luke Skywalker. Sigh.
My brother collects all the figures; he still has them
They must be worth something more than memories now.

I am twelve years old
and we are traveling across the country
in the middle of a gas crisis in a big, brown
Cadillac Seville - my crazy parents!
And I am introduced to America
the most beautiful, diverse country I've ever seen
it is raining in Tennessee
I fall in love with New England
I see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall
and lose my belt in the snow in Central Park.
I see my first Broadway show in Times Square
this was long before Giuliani and the 'family-ization'
of the place
New York was a gritty, seedy place then. Its reputation
well-deserved. Rough, rude, hard. I adored it from the start.
We stayed at the Park Lane; we walked by the Twin Towers and they were so tall I thought they reached all the way to Heaven
And I did not see them again until September 11th.

I am 14 years old and I am in junior high
It was called junior high back then, not middle school
I am in drama class; for our drama class auditions I did a scene from Anne Frank
and being on stage was and still is, one of the happiest places I've ever been.

I am 16 years old and I've just passed my driver's test
Freedom awaits! I am given the family Audi and I take off
like there is no looking back; I laugh now - how badly I wanted to learn to drive
and now, it is a dreadful chore.

I am dating but there is no one serious
I have immense crushes
And music has become the balm to soothe my crooked teenage soul
The Cure, Duran Duran, the advent of MTV a few years earlier
How lucky I was to grow up in the 80's with such fantastic music
The Brat Pack
The downside
Reaganomics and mutually assured destruction
though the latter doesn't seem so awful now that rogue maniacs
are bragging about enriching uranium and wiping countries off the map.

I am 19 and remember so clearly feeling that was an important birthday
The last year of my teens. Ha!
Nihilism
Existentialism
Sartre and Plath were my best friends.
I read the collected works of Oscar Wilde
Was suicide romantic then? I had all the time, the good health, the privilege
in the world to agonize about everything and nothing
Self-indulgence was my passion
and I believe the beginnings of depression came to visit me at 19.
Oh life! And Death! And the meaningless of it all! The agony! I roll my eyes.
What the hell did I know about any of it.

College years in Malibu
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I called my mother one night crying.
I'm so depressed. Oh wait! Mom, I've gotta go. The limo is here.
She's never let me forget that. We laugh about it now.
I do not deny the pain, the problems, the self-inflicted emotional hell
I put myself through
But there were so many good times.
Clubbing and music and bands and Hollywood
and staying out half the night
drunk on music and laughter
Cafe 50's in Venice, Cherry Cokes, Scream
English Acid, White Trash Au-Go Go
The Roxy, The Whiskey, Club With No Name
Madame Wong's, The Cathouse
The bands then! It was all about the bands.
Human Drama, Faster Pussycat, Kill for Thrills
Gilbey Clarke at the Coconut Teazer
"Are you a Catholic?"
Jane's Addiction - the house band at Scream
The Cult, The Nymphs, Electric Angels
Johnny Indovina singing like an angel at Club Lingerie
The Church at the Palladium - my very first Church concert
Bauhaus, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, Soundgarden
Guns 'n Roses as an opening band!
L.A. Guns and all the sleaze a nice private college girl could want
Almost all these clubs are gone now
but the memories live on, tucked away in my mind, the laughter that haunts
me time after time.

I have seen things I never dreamt I'd see
The end of a handgun pointed at my face
Mountains on fire all around me
Friendships I thought would last forever dissolve under the weight
of the tiniest of trespasses
Loves that came and went and seemed and so profound at the time
Earthquakes and riots
Plane engines on fire
near death experiences and the nearer I get
the less afraid I am.

Funny how that works.
So I have been student and then for years, teacher.
It was trial by fire; I became professor
And started saying scary phrases like
"Have you seen the way these kids dress today?
No respect I tell you. No respect. If I'd talked to my teacher like that...."
It's all a cycle.

What did I dream I would become when I was young? Mother?
Career woman? Surely at college I new I'd set the world on fire
and yet nary a match I've lit. You grow and you grow and good things and bad things happen and you learn you will survive
that which you were absolutely certain
you could never survive.

George Harrison, RIP, said it best. All things must pass.
And they do. And they will. And I will.
So I am 39 years old and I have learned to enjoy what I have;
to want what I have if I do not have what I want all the time
to love the kids even when I want to throw myself on the floor
and have a nice kindergarten-like tantrum

I am 39, but I am also 5 and 8 and 10
and I remember theaters that weren't multiplexes
and summer days that truly lasted forever
the taste of chlorine dreams
and autumn leaves
walking home from school
the smell of carbon paper
and Elmer's glue
I remember the vastness of Texas
and the magic of a Charlie Brown Christmas
the smell of roasting pumpkin seeds
and trick or treating without fear.

I am 39 but I am 15 and 16 and 18 and legal!
I am 21 and I can drink and gamble but don't do much of either
My biggest vice going to Bleecker Bob's and shelling out my allowance
on 12" singles
I am 21 and I have a royal blue velvet coat I bought at Retail Slut
and I haunt the ballrooms of the old Plaza Hotel downtown
I am 25 and a graduate student
I am 29 and I have buried my father, written my thesis and graduated all within six months
I am 34 and on a bright, clear, blue September day, I have felt my heart shatter
in places where it can never fully be put back together as I watch my fellow countrymen and women live and die a nightmare I cannot even fathom
I am 35 and a college teacher
I am 39 and I am blessed
for everything that has happened, good and bad
to bring me to where I am now,
where all things must pass.