Now

The time is…now.

I figured I’d share this bit with you. This particular moment feels wrapped in quiet. The house is dim. Only the light overhead remains, dimmed low for a notion of ambience at some other point in time. It is the last hour completing 50 years of life. I don’t have any particular reason to give for why this particular birthday feels so significant to me. Is it ‘where I am’ in my life? Is it the progress I am making…in life, in love, in work, in…damn, is there any facet of me that I’m not taking a hard look at these days? My experience is that I’m enjoying ‘my experience’ more, generally, and sleeping a lot better  – I feel pretty balanced most of the time, and even the hormonal ups and downs are no longer calling the shots.  It all seems so mundane in text.

How is it that it feels so significant to face this moment, this place, this…now? 50…in minutes. Oh, I know, I know – just as with ‘end time’ prophesies, or the Y2K scare, tomorrow will be tomorrow. A day. Each moment a new now. I will be who I am. My lovers will be who they are. Love and life will continue in whatever way they will, based on circumstances and choices.  I will be 50. So will a lot of other people. Hell, Johnny Depp is 50, or so I read a day or two ago. He seems timeless to me, but I guess someone, somewhere, is probably keeping track of that detail. lol. 50, though, how important is it really? It isn’t. Time is pretty arbitrary, I think. Doesn’t it matter more what we do with it, than that it is?

I had considered something long, and detailed, and nostalgic for this post. Today has been my last day before I am 50. I’ve had a certain sense that I am ‘closing out the first half’…but it’s entirely internal.  Based on events and conversations, it’s clear that this is not an experience everyone shares…or perhaps it is difficult to identify with [or care about! lol] from some other vantage point in time? I don’t think I’d have been able to connect with such a thing at 21. Maybe not even at 30. Will I care about 50 when I am 70? It seems unlikely. So…I took some time to be alone with this last hour…just me and…me. Well, and you. Thanks for sharing the moment with me. 🙂

‘Now’ has gotten to be a pretty big deal for me, lately. I’ve learned some things about my values, too, and who I am…and who I am becoming. 50 years is a lot of ‘past’. Some of it will likely live on, isolated within my memory, for as long as the wreckage in my head and in my heart lasts, but what then? Is success forgetting? Is healing really something within reach for me? Who am I when I am whole? What does the world look like through those glasses? Do nightmares really go away? Then what?

This is getting long, and without any particular point. I’ll be 50 tomorrow. That’s when the second half starts, and instead of spending a long while writing, perhaps weeping, and wading through a lifetime of emotions I have already felt, about events I have already experienced, I want to come back to now. This right here. Not quite 50, almost done with 49…timeless in a dark room, the quiet tap of my fingers on the keyboard, the hush of the air purifier, and the house sounds creating this quiet made of sounds that seems more dense and solitary than quiet is intended to be. Now. I will set this aside, finished (do we need more words between us now, in this stillness together?) and end the first half in thought, cradled in a very nice ‘now’ indeed, and eager to wake and celebrate how far I’ve come, and how worth it the journey is proving to be.

Tomorrow…well, it’ll be ‘now’, then, won’t it? lol

Blackberries – summer comes.