Boats Against the Currents

Cranky. I’ve been very, very cranky these last few days.

No real reason for it, and absolutely no excuse either, since my life these days is pur-ty good. Low on drama. High on little treats and indulgences that are contentment-making if not exactly ecstasy-inducing.

Some of it’s the weather. It actually snowed yesterday. None of the snow stuck. But still. Fuckin’ snow.

Part of it is that I’ve been seeding the mindless dribble fields a bit too hard. Make hay when the sun shines etcetera. But that hay comes with an opportunity cost. My present clients are (a) a big online travel brokerage for whom I’m writing descriptions of dream trips to places like Dubai – Dubai is the richest city in the world. Hard to believe that as recently as 1970, it was just another sleepy fishing village on the Persian Gulf! – and (b) a mobile phone hookup site for gay males that doesn’t want porn exactly, but does want saucy allusions. There’s only so much you can write about the seamen in Baltimore, though. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.)

Much of it is the imminence of my birthday. I’m going to be 63 years old in 12 (count ‘em) days, and what do I have to show for my life?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two wonderful children. And they are wonderful. But surely that says more about the DNA I channeled their way than it does about my personal accomplishments.

Of course, it could be argued that nobody ever has anything to show for their life. A week after you’re dead, all the funeral flowers have wilted. Somebody who’s alive steals all your great ideas and doesn’t give you credit. Maybe if you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald, someone will get shitfaced at a party and chant, So we carry on, boats against the waves, borne back endlessly into the past, and someone else, who's even more shitfaced but who dropped out of an American Lit graduate program, will sneer, It’s beat on, you fuckin' moron. And currents, missing that “ceaselessly” entirely.

Must remember to shut down my Facebook account temporarily around my birthday. I’m not a Facebook fan exactly, but most of the time, I don’t mind it. It’s a place where I can obsessively squirrel my photographs of abandoned places and weird ads, plus it’s the only way I can keep up with the antics of the far-flung DiLucchio clan.

I do hate the Facebook birthday ritual, though.

Let’s see… I have 269 Friends on Facebook, and only 83 of them wished me Happy Birthday. What the fuck is wrong with those other 186 people, huh? Did I offend them somehow? Are they trying to offend me? Are they really my friends? Like if I needed a kidney, would they volunteer to be donor tested?

Etcetera, etcetera.

It’s impossible to stop these sorts of thoughts so it’s best just not to give them the opportunity to happen.