(Old) Epistemic Ingemination

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

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Fri, 02 Jun 2006

Just like Jerry Mathers, Thomas Hardy, the Marquis De Sade, Martha Washington, Charlie Watts, and Tex Schramm, I was born on June 2nd. Ninety three years to the day after the Civil War ended when forces under Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered at Galveston, Texas, in 1865, becoming the last garrison to do so.

First of all, it's weird. Forty Eight years in this world undeniably puts me squarely into "middle age" territory by any sane measure. Well, to hell with that. I am enjoying my youth far, far too much. I'll just skip straight from adolescence to death, if it's all the same to you.

I have the good fortune of being a musician, and a writer, and, yes, a stubborn fighter and a lover, a romantic and an idealist. Such people, if they survive, often do their best work after the age of fifty, and it's looking more and more like I might make the starting gate on this one. That's the goal, after all: to have the energy and the hungers and the fascinations and the enthusiasms and the simple joie de vivre of a teenager, combined with the wisdom of someone who has fifty years of bonehead self-inflicted mistakes under his belt. And believe me, friends, I qualify in both areas. To live a full life, one must be a fool many times over.

And, often, many times over again. Often with us, hearts get hurt; a conservatism of the spirit begins to advise our life decisions, and caution becomes a guiding voice. This is called growing old.

I view it differently. My understanding tells me that the very best way to avoid a broken heart is to create one that is too big to break. Then you can be free, and well, and when the reaper comes, he is not grim.

So don't bother "respecting" this elder; he is your contemporary and your peer. I am turning around the clock and going the other direction. I know people in their twenties that are older than I am; I know people in their eighties who are younger. The latter are the ones to watch.

Thanks for letting me be here, Great Spirit.

Posted at 12:10 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink] [Reload all] [E-mail]