Burthdays!
I had almost written this down in my head yesterday, it had a nice beginning, something about how a new year; the next year after a birth-day is like 4 am in the morning on an every-day – everything is still clean, the comforting mist, the happy shade of black – it’s like that unused piece of soap, still packed – ready to wash everything away. It’s like you have a fresh shot at life again. Birthday`s are the Japan of sunrises – the sun rises in Japan first, covers rest of Asia, then Africa-Europe, then North and South America – as the full year goes by, so does the sun.
However I didn`t write it down yesterday, I don`t know why, maybe I was too occupied with other things. If you don`t already know, other things make up 90% of my life. But what I’m trying to say is it was something around these things. Something around a fresh start – a clean slate. Wiped clean. The slate is not new, its only clean – Do you get it?
The point was that I didn`t feel that at the turn of this birthday. This is nothing to be sad about, so please don`t be sad. I turned 28. And I think, I only think because I can never be sure of anything, especially when it is about myself, it has something to do with that.
So you see, I had began taking responsibilities since I was 17 or maybe 18 – and no one around me was doing that, so I thought well – I`m too ahead on the road and felt a sense of achievement – the same happened when I was 24, I moved out Bombay and settled in Gujarat – a full home (there is a difference between a full home and a home – the difference is like a box full of cookies and a box of cookies), I was 27 last year and somehow it still felt like I was ahead of the curve. On a highway there were handful of cars ahead of me and all were behind.
But now, the 28 – it’s like I`m a participant in a different race now, the rules have changed, so has the road and my car is still the same. You see same slate – clean board.
Now no one asks you if you want to participate, folks wonder what is the fun in that – let’s throw him in and see what happens. The folks in this analogy are aliens watching us sing, dance, fuck, sleep, sing, dance, fuck, work, sleep – you get it, right?
So the rules have changed, or so it seems. Nothing physically has happened. The outside is the same, the outside has always been the same. The inside has seen some overhaul, or again, that`s how it seems. It`s like a boundary I unknowingly crossed having fun, frolicking like the jumpy spongy sheep who steps outside the barn drunk in life and is suddenly in the company of wolves or sleepwalking. I was asleep, I was walking in the dark, and unknowingly I crossed a liquid slushy transparent wall and landed on this side of 28.
