ETC...

 

Twenty-ten.

Feeling retrospective. Thinking about 'age brackets', and whether there is something radically strange and disjuncted about being in one's 30s and not deeply entrenched in breadwinning and child rearing.

Cultural literacy forces us to live a life of constant comparison. I have a romanticized vision of what 30-something life should be, based on the 80's television show of the same name. Mel Harris gently sways to the stereo with her nine-month old daughter in her arms, turning to Ken Olin who watches her from the doorway, a soft-focus, slow zoom, life-affirming Hallmark moment concluding 14 episodes of existential anxiety attacks. Despite long afternoons hiding out in the darkroom drinking beer and listening to the Phillies games, despite being the life of the party but lately finding fewer parties and less things funny, despite his marriage being under strain, despite being overwhelmed by feelings he's never had to deal with before, despite all of his doubts surrounding displacement and entrenchment and fatherhood and growing old, he finds perspective in that final scene, as she smiles back at him, and whispers, "I think she likes Van Morrison."

God. We ruthlessly mocked that show in High School, while our english teacher, a Volvo-driving, NPR quoting, Timothy Busfield lookalike said, "Its captures life at that age so perfectly...you'll see."

We rolled our eyes, not knowing it had implanted a fiction of what life is supposed to be. I wondered if I could ever be in a position to grapple with those "mature" issues -- as if HAVING the issues was somehow heroic. While distancing myself from the idealization of middle class well-adjusted 30somethingdom that television portrayed, I still saw the bittersweet significance of it all, all the triumphs and failures and post-20's minutia that go into fashioning a new sense of home. Not for the show itself, but the innate sense that this WAS a bridge I would have to cross eventually, that life after 30 was a pill that we would all have to swallow, and that it wasn't about silly yuppies and their angst-ridden melodramas, but simply about the fear of growing up, no matter how old you are, and knowing enough about life to be totally confused by it.

I remember a quote from one of the actors on Charlie Rose or one of those talk shows, in which he characterized the central theme as "owning up to certain realities, not necessarily the compromise of principles, but rather the recognition that many of our notions of the future were idealizations and can't be lived in the world."

Once that's in place, its all a bit easier. So much of our retrospection and uncertainty about who we were then and who we're supposed to be now is chimerical, based on such unrealistic archetypes. Growing into ourselves takes as long as it takes, and its hard enough without the added pressure of "hitting the marks" that society gives us. A friend going toe-to-toe with single motherhood once told me, "It is way more important to figure out how to be happy being you than to figure out how to be happy being your age. Fuck numbers. Sometimes I am pissed that I didn't get my perfect ""thirtysomething" life, but I got this one, and have to do what I can with it."

I do relate to feeling displaced and disjuncted. Most days I feel like I'm secretly still a teenager. But I also felt so much older than my age, when I was a teen. My birthdays have always involved me wondering what the heck the deal was about. In the longterm. And about the choices I've made, and will make. I sort of did things in reverse. And now, from this vantage, I know there's nothing inherently noble about all that stuff I saw on 80's television, or funny, or even particularly interesting, and that we weren't the first generation to face such endeavors, and ultimately its about people, not ages.

I'm perfectly content to feel lost in uncharted territory, even if its the territory we're supposed to know best. And if I was a thirty-something english teacher, earnestly advising my students that the sitcom of our lives is all about waiting for a feeling of well-adjustment that never comes, I'd probably expect them not to laugh.

☼

Sehnsucht

"The Bull and Scorpion"

.

. We've traveled so far but the stars are the same We together witness a story written in sand of Taurean steps resolute & recurring bowed head silent horns pointing ever toward the horizon unconcerned with the uncertainty of far away things

We've traveled so far yet the stars are the same I called for their wisdom, and they laughed I know the secret signature of your soul, they said You were made for this journey stitch by stitch, as a glove is made for a hand

Your hide, having met the scorpions lash thick as two planks a placidly obstinate disregard for many unnameable somethings unfinished or imperfect save one

But beware, they said you flounder here where is the non-earthly land you call your home? Saudade and Sehnsucht are not your guides though you may name them such Like thieves, their trick is not to trade but to take things away

Abandon the secret you cannot hide beneath your hide and cannot tell within your tale for what you remember will turn out itself to be a remembering Beware, Beware.

Indeed you have traveled far but the stars are not the same, they further confessed. These dumb idols will break the heart of you, their worshiper. They are the scent of a flower you have not found the echo of a tune you have not heard the memory of a country you have not visited and though you have written your steps across a desert chased us down many paths the secret of those not taken are forever veiled in beautiful promise. A kindness in an unfulfilled world that these inconsolable secrets should shine like stars

How, then have we traveled so far, and the stars are still the same? And they, with no need for something other than the present care not for pain of absence And we, precious jewels and unwritten wills indulging in the unknown are the Moon’s special dignities exalted and fallen longing for we know not what heedless of cold council and time's arrow Only the seasons know when to begin when to continue and when to end And we know nothing but each other and a few German words

-McW

 A few panels from freelance DC work, circa 2006.  JLA #12