It’s Philip Glass’s birthday today.
I went through a period in grad school where I listened to this cd every day. It was not a good period. Did the music make it better, or worse? Or did I just ride it through?
Anyway, I like Glass, but wouldn’t mention his birthday were it not also my birthday. I’m not as old as the composer, but I almost certainly have more days behind me than in front of me.
It’s odd: to think of one’s life as more than half over but also simultaneously to realize I’ve lived a long time and I’ve got a long stretch in front of me.
I turn around and look at my life and say sing-shout My god, what have I done? but I don’t ever think, wow, that was quick. It’s been a trek, a slog, a marathon, a sojourn—anything but a lark.
Perhaps that’s the one upside to living so much of my life down: I’ve felt so damned many jolts and jangles on my wayfaring through the days that looking ahead the end does not seem near; a bumpy path is a long one.
No guarantees, of course—Mayan apocalypse 2012!—but absent the end of the world or a Newt presidency (do I repeat myself?), well, as Emmylou sang, I’ve still got a ways to go.
AbsurdBeats 