29

another birthday, another blog post.

things are a little different from last year, not to mention the year before that.

i'll go to sleep alone, and i'll wake up alone.

but that will be the end of it. that won't happen 11/14/2007.

brutal honesty: i hesitate posting to entries in which i proclaim my "love" for someone other than 203. it doesn't feel right, somehow. and yet, that is my story. that is where i was, who i was, what i was back then. back then i could celebrate my squat milestone as i saw my future slipping away through my helpless fingers like a 350lb deadlift. as i saw 203 preparing to become 203 and me preparing to become alone.

i like to listen to guitar solos and interpret them. i found an album in my mp3 collection, by a group named "Solar Project". There's a track called "Time (Part 2)", to which I have been listening for about a week. I listened to it as I drove into JTree, as I drove around JTree, as I drove home from JTree, as I drove to meet my love, as I drove to depart from her, as I drove to and from my new friend the climbing gym, and even as I write this right now. I set myself a deadline that I would *know* the guitar solo's meaning by the end of today, and as i hit "rewind" one last time, I think I have it.

the song itself is a 5 minute guitar solo followed by some crappy lyrics. the solo speaks a different story than the lyrics. it starts off with thunder, and the guitar and cymbals and keyboard are quiet, near silent, and slow.

lonely.

they reflect upon their loneliness and live in it. they absorb it. they exude it. they *know* loneliness and sorrow. and then, they find something. a mystery. a way out. a future. the tempo picks up. the chords are played more forcefully. drums come in. the music strives for the future, for its escape from loneliness. it won't be done through quiet, sad reflection, but through decisive action.

it is a self-sustaining reaction.

as the soloist finds strength in his music, the music gains strength from the soloist. tentatively, it dares to soar, and finds it can fly. rejoicing, the drums join in, fading in from near-nothing to pounding thunder as the guitar finds just how far its wings will take it. as it unfolds itself into life it sees off into the future and cries out in happiness not for where it is but for where it knows it can take itself with what it has found....

and then, it's over.

nothing lasts forever

not even 28 years.

i sit here, listening to meaningful music, doing what i love to a keyboard, my own humble instrument, sipping my favorite rye (who's like us?), and reflecting on my own impending future: less than a month off.

closer than the distant thunder.

closer than loneliness.

i didn't squat any fancy weight today. i didn't even exercise. i'll squat tomorow but it won't be much.

but my gads, man, have i changed even just in one short year. i said something to my mom this last weekend on my visit, when i'd returned from bouldering and soaring above the cloudless skies of joshua tree, i said: "i realize now that you had no parenting manual, that you were making it all up as you went along."

i enjoyed hornby's "high fidelity" precisely because the main character undergoes many of the same realizations, the same epiphanies, the same understandings of growing up that i am undergoing. i reckon i'm doing it rather late in my life, but i reckon some people never do it at all, so maybe i'm not so bad off.

the trick to all of life is nothing more than what they've always said: believe in yourself. i am a man, not a boy, because i believe i am. i'm making it up as i go along, but for a long time now, i've been imitating a man, rather than a boy, so much so that i've now become convincing enough at it that i believe it myself. i'm very nearly an adult.

but as i commune with the repeating guitar and keyboard, i know that i am more than just that. i haven't (yet?) lost the important things, the boyish things, the innocence, the hope, the faith that things will keep on getting better even as they get worse. like the solo, i realize that what i've got is not nearly so important as where it can take me, if i put it to proper use.

at last, the kings of edom are being brought to balance.

nearly two years later i know exactly what i meant. the keys are scattered all around (silvia??!!?!?!?!?!!?) and they are not so hard to grasp.

but you see,

you see,

something's different.

i didn't squat today. i didn't fall down in the shower. i didn't write a whiney obfuscated piece about how i wished i had the fucking testicles to dump a girl i don't like and find one i do.

because this year, i'm a man. i've got just those testicles. and if i didn't happen to have the most perfect woman i could ever hope to have, what i do have is the confidence and self-respect to dump whatever non-perfect i was with and get on with things.

<crickets chirp>

yeah. i've got the testicles and the woman. (and the rye and the neverending solo.) i'm growing still. true, the writing isn't coming along as well as i'd like -- but the blogging is. and i'm climbing. and i'm socializing, something i've never done satisfactorily. i'm traveling, however modestly (still more than Kant ever did, apparently). i'm more refined. i'm stronger. i'm smarter, better, and above all, happier.

i was born in thunder, and now i soar above loneliness and muck on wings of rubber and music, looking at not where i've been or even where i am, but where i dare imagine that i can go.

i have not a single shred of sadness or self-delusion about my 29, and it could not be better.

i am the surprising, experimental, non-traditional off-note in my own guitar solo.

i am the wailing railing cry of down-fret defiance.

i am the steady drums of the future.

i am 29 and gray and i like it that way. i'm still getting better. how about that?