Birthday Blues (And Pinks)

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time - Jean Paul Richter

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter

~ Mark Twain

But meantime let me whoop it up,
And tell the world that I'm alive:
Fill to the brim the bubbly cup

- Robert William Service

Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no in-between when it comes to opinion on birthdays.  Me? I LOVE them! We Ariens aren't ones to shy away from a celebration of ourselves.  We're all about the self, so why should we shy furtively away from birthdays, our very own validation markers?

Indeed, why shouldn't birthdays be celebrated? They're important! Trés important. More important than other calendar events, like weddings and themed holidays. Why? Because they recognise the gift of our presence here in this life. Our presence in other peoples lives. They are our very own anniversaires (- the French for 'birthday').  Why shouldn't they be acknowledged and celebrated?  Is each and every one of us not important enough to celebrate - regardless of our age, situation or mood-o-meter? Of course we are! Birthdays are our guaranteed one special day of the year. And I don't think it's selfish to demand recognition for them; it's our right.

Lots has been said about 'birthday blues', the accompanying twinges of sadness that come with getting older, but I prefer to focus on the 'pinks' of birthdays - ie: the cake, the greetings, good and real candle wishes, presents, blushing attention and all the sugar-sweet malarkey. I quite like being the centre of attention for one day out of 365, doesn't everybody? 

And if you ask me, birthdays should get to have gift-lists too, as well as just weddings and the like. Birthday gift lists would be a lot more exciting for one thing - no domestic  essentials for the birthday boy/girl nooo!  Our wish gifts would be in the realm of the exciting, impractical, fun and maybe just that tad bit fantastical (well, if you don't wish, you don't get!) Mine this year goes something along the lines of a trip to Paris (the ultimate gift ever), a pink-iced cake, a bouquet of peonies (but they're not in season yet!), a tattoo (all in the name of self-declaration and the marking of a new decade...), a publishing deal would be nice (as would a lottery win), a stack of coloured macaroons (possible, very), and topping it all off right now as I'm looking out the window to a dull and grey day (groan) - a sunny day. Yes, a big smacking smiling sun, that would be nice (ye gods, if you're listening...) *Excuse the self-indulgent listing here, but all in the name of if I write them, they may just materialize thinking...

Nah really, all anyone wants for their birthday I think is not even to be the centre of attention (eh-hem, well...) but just to know that they matter. Hence all the heartbreak that ensues when birthdays are forgotten, dismissed, fall under the radar etc. Their specialness diminished, and somehow, in the process, your specialness too. That's where the real birthday blues lie, not in the silly aging phobia.

Speaking of age.... well, as Mark Twain pointed out - it doesn't matter if you don't mind. Some people blow the aging process all out of proportion. They see birthdays merely as clocking up the years, the dreaded digits, rather than affairs of celebration and existential exuberance.  I don't get this. I don't do age-grieving. I don't dwell on the 'the years clocking up.' And I don't get people who do. Ok, you may suddenly wake up one day and think - "heck  I'm ____ age already! How did that happen??!!"  But then I look on the flip side of it.

Everything I've learned in those years. Who I've become. All the moments I've experienced that have taken their place in the gold of memory, priceless and timeless. Because time isn't measured in years, or days, or by clocks. It's measured in moments. One of my favourite writers Jeanette Winterson has the perfect line to explain this: "the continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative,  there are only lit-up moments and the rest is dark." And there is only now to concern ourselves with, the here and the now, the present, which is indeed a gift we are continually unwrapping. 

As  Gertrude Stein said, 'we are always the same age inside.'  We are indeed. If you feel young, you'll always remain so. And another wise comment from Henri Frederic Amiel, 'I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.' Never a truer word said. The people who complain about getting older in numbers are usually those who are getting older inside. Woe are they. As Picasso once said 'it takes a long time to become young.' It does.

And now on the eve of turning thirty (yes, the big 3-0, imagine!!!), I'm looking at Billy Collins poem below and thinking that the aging despair, the sadness, the regret should be multiplied to the power of 3. The nostalgia for all the years that have passed. But no, I refuse to look back, I'm an eternal optimist and its all fronts on forward. (But I've included the poem anyway for all those with a predisposition to the birthday blues...)

Thirty to me, means consolidating those flighty feelings I discovered in the flingsome twenty-something years. It does not mean old. It means maybe something more akin to maturity (yeah right, my inner daredevil spats!), but yes, it almost feels like a mellowing out. And by no means, do I feel the panic stereotype of my age-bracket that has afflicted thousands of peers - to settle down, get married, get a mortgage, get monotonous. Heck no! I'm too free-spirited for that. Thirty is just the beginning of more,  'everything I know I learned after thirty,' (- George Clemenceau) and I get the sense that the best is yet to come. More wingspan.

Indeed, 'we turn not older with years, but newer every day' (-Emily Dickinson.) We are continually learning and renewing.  Besides, if you're young-at-heart, like all Ariens are anyway, you never grow old. We're still the babies of the zodiac and children at heart, waiting for the next adventure around the corner, measuring time in heartbeats, not heinous years. 

On a last note, birthdays to me are more than anything else, a chance for new beginnings. With all the planets behind you, you have more chance of making a fresh start in your astrological new year than the calendar new year. Birth days are like standing on the edge of the past, about to tip into the future, a horizon up ahead, a blank slate, and everything and anything you want to be beckoning ahead. Your future in front of you like a great ribboned gift. That definitely calls for some celebration and cheer.

Now I'm off to 'whoop it up/and tell the world that I'm alive', woo-hoo!!!

(And a Happy Birthday to all other April babies out there!)

~ Siobhán :)

A poem for the birthday blues...

On Turning Ten - Billy Collins 

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

And one that gets at the real meaning of birthdays...

A Birthday Poem -Ted Kooser 

 

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

National Poetry Day!

from the film 'Dead Poets Society'

Today is All-Ireland National Poetry Day, hurray! Or as I like to call it - National Read-a-Poem Day. To appreciate, celebrate and relish poetry.

And before all you non-poetry-lovers out there scoff and squirm and bah-humbug me, just hear me out, quickly!

Reading a poem a day is like popping a vitamin for the soul. Yes, I've used this soundbite before but I'll say it again! Poetry is not some pompous pedestal of literature, but more a bouquet of life in bloom, for everyone, about everything. It's anything but pedantic. It's powerful. It could change your life. (If read on a continuous basis, most definitely. At an once-off, it might just change your viewpoint a little; open a window in your mind into a meadow of beautiful meaning.) 

Today is for celebrating poetry. Poetry reminds us of who we really are. It reminds us of what's important in this life. It stills time and quiets all the rabble-dabble-scrabble static of day-to-day detritus. It sieves through the mud of days and finds the gold beneath, presents to us the treasure in our midst. An alchemy that changes ordinary into extraordinary through the sparking flints of words. 

Open your mind to some poems today. And if your mind won't open (some are confusing I admit, but just like any puzzle, therein lies the fun!) - open your heart instead. Let the warmth and wisdom of the words flow into your heart and make life glow all a-glitter-and-golden with wonder for a short moment in time.

Give poetry a moment of your time today and it will give you so much more in return. You could start by reading below, or better yet, get yourself along to one of the many free poetry readings around the country today. At the very least it makes a change from the usual slog; it might just end up flipping the entire usual slog stuff into unusual and unique and something to whole-heartedly embrace.  

Go. Read, listen, enjoy!

poetry PR gal,

~ Siobhán.

First, for those of you afraid of a poem, don't be! Let go of worries and just let the poem say what it wants to say:

'Introduction to Poetry' - Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

And for us poetry lovers, the sheer delight of reading poems:

'Eating Poetry' - Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up. Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.    She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

And lastly, the master craftsman of poetry, our Nobel Prizewinner, Seamus Heaney. Here, in one of my favourite of his poems, he explains what exactly poetry is capable of doing:

'Postscript' - Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.