I rang in my birthday crying. Not a few tears, but heavy, sobbing, compounding pressure in your head crying. In a way it was a relief, because I thought the pharmacy on my bathroom sink had stolen that from me. I don’t think I’ve cried since mom passed.
Life is rarely where you expect it to be at any given time. The forks in the road come in numbers, like metacarpals splaying outward from the carpals, and splaying again like bone fractals that wrap and encapsulate. The road is dark. The brush is thick. Our paths become adventures in guesswork, until they all meet in the same destination.
One would expect to develop immunity to, or at least appreciation for, the black humor that spells out our existence. For every success, a failure. For every victory, a loss. For every signal of recovery, a global pandemic. For the past four years, I’ve said “next year can’t be worse.” I should appreciate the intangible defiance that wishes to prove me wrong.
This isn’t a complaint, or a cry for commiseration, it’s a declaration to the infinite possibilities that brought me here. To the recurring chaos that presents itself as order. To the indifferent executioner’s blade, hungry for heads. An acknowledgment and acceptance of everything I can’t control.
It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to feel frightened, and not know where to go. The maps have been burned and replaced with the blueprints of madmen. All reason abandoned, like orphans abandoned below towering spires of the houses of god. Like those very spires abandoned by god himself. It’s okay to be lost in a world with no direction.
I don’t want pity, as I don’t give it to others. This is simply the gears turning in the machines of matter and time. We are from the earth until we’re one with the earth. Entropy takes all, just as all is born again.
Chop away at the overgrowth in that bone fractal maze; defy the twisting of the vine. Carve order in the chaos, and claim it. When the executioner’s blade falls, meet it with your own. I’m short on time, just like everyone else.
Life may move with repetitive indifference like a Foucault pendulum, and therein lies the only freedom we can have. The knowledge that no matter our pain, no matter our joy, life will plod along without pause. There’s no use in shedding tears and throwing your fists to the sky when your misfortune is simply statistical chance.
Tend to your wounds and move forward, because the ride doesn’t stop.
Happy birthday, Tim.