Growing older

My sister writes today: "We're almost forty! Where did the time go?"

Thanks so much for the reminder, as if I couldn't read the caliber on the bullet in that particular barrel down which I'm staring.

It's true, though. How long before we become the old people we used to make fun of, the ones we want to kill when we're behind them on the road? How long before I'm the old character from Logan's Run? How long before I'm the only one who remembers Logan's Run (but can't remember that he's worn the same ratty sweater for two weeks straight)?

My eighteenth birthday, twenty years ago: I got a boom box and a copy of The Joshua Tree. I also got some folding cash, which some older friends obligingly converted into massive quantities of truly wretched beer. We walked a mile or so into the woods and got well and truly blasted into space. Among friends my age, there was a feeling that our generation's time was finally about to come around.

So what did we do with "our time?" We piddled it away, just like every generation before us.

When I was twenty-five, my father said to me: "Think about how long it's taken you to get to twenty-five. Twenty-five to fifty? [here he snapped his fingers] Half that time." And so far, he's been right. I'm a fair sight away from fifty. . .hell, I'm not even forty yet. But I worry. You know, when you wake up early? And you look at the clock and think, "Cool! I've got another hour before the alarm goes off." And you go back to sleep?

It never seems like a whole hour, does it?

Remember the story of Rip Van Winkle? It's only a few hours' drive from here to the place where that story was set. The older I get, the more I wonder if Irving didn't have an allegory in mind. . .how quickly twenty years can pass, while you're off drinking with little men (that ain't thunder in the hills; it's Hendrick Hudson and his boys, a-playin' nine-pin).

So, what's to do with the rest of "our time?" Well, a couple of my old friends have started up a theatre group. Saw one of my oldest friends in their first production last month. We haven't been onstage together since The Music Man, back in '88. We OWE the world a better performance. In the process, I've got in touch with a more extroverted side of myself that I thought had been dead since about 1990. It's cool!

So, what does that mean for my lovely watchers (the few of you still out there)? Well, today after work, I decided it was time to get my fat, lazy ass off it and take some pictures again. First time I've been out since September of last year. Got nearly a hundred pictures, but you might find the material a bit morbid.

This place is a valley, surrounded by hills on four sides. One of those hills contains four graveyards, more or less interconnected, including a Pet Sematary (that you'll get this fall, muuuahahaha). It's one giant necropolis, and so that's what this series will be. . .pictures from a necropolis, with maybe a few stories thrown in. Not true stories. . .I won't point you to the town drunk who made up for the grandfathers I'd recently lost. Nor will I show you my great-grandparents' resting places, nor those of the other friends and family interred there. But markers suggest stories. If you don't believe me, check out Tanith Lee's Secret Books of Paradys - Book 3: The Book of the Dead. I can't write with even a fraction of her grace, but I shall do what I can. Hope you enjoy!

"Though much is taken, much abides, and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. . ."
-Tennyson