As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (p.209)
It has been said that man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal.
–Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, p. 91
~~~
The coup de grâce to all this indulgent interior mapping that anticipates my fiftieth birthday came just yesterday.
Admittedly I look a wreck this week. I am sick; I have tried to do what I do anyway, which is an elaborate version of nothing, and it has ruffled me even beyond normal sickness.
The plumber here yesterday asked how old I was, and when I told him, he said, “I was wondering if you might qualify for a senior discount.”
This is the first time I’ve heard that phrase thrown my way—I’m sure now that the ice is cracked there will be lots of similarly sudden ruptures about how old I might be, until I am finally accustomed to living like a polar bear in winter, drifting on a cold floe towards some unknown landfall, the promise only found in the movement through the cold.
~~~
The years 40-50—there is no more steeper descent until the end, is there? The years 40-50 are where we first understand that days are long and years are short, the opposite of youth.
You may think him a flake for other reasons (or me for way more), but the thinker I admire most on middle age is Jung. Jung believed that in a successful middle age, the ego is stripped away, and what is left is self.
All the younger targets of ego—college, money, sex, salary—ultimately don’t matter when the ego falls away. Who I turned out to be was who I always knew deep down inside who I was: standoffish, bemusedly pawnbroken, alternately robust and sickly, Francophile, cocktailophile, solitaire, writer. It may be I am worn a little thin from the spiky temperament and frequently sordid private life thus far, and dealing more with the residue than the blend of such a life, but residue is also a critical component of any concoction—sometimes, it’s even the point. Most things here now were always here, only now they are moreso.
~~~
So, a friend of mine, his fiftieth. He had a big party at a downtown restaurant I much admired—he made it a fundraiser, in fact—he schmoozed people and they he, there was champagne and postmodern hors d’oeuvres, there were Councilpeople, a City proclamation…how could my fiftieth birthday measure againt this?
Would I want it to?
It took me a long time, even too long, to realize: No, of course not.
~~~
I cannot blame the people who have asked me about my plans for my fiftieth birthday for their interest. For it has been nobody but myself who has kept everyone informed about the day, even as I have kept myself informed about it. I have been too too aware of the milestone; I have been as aware of it as of a marriage date, a graduation date, a send-off date, an execution date. In some counterfeit ways, it has already been all these. It shouldn’t have been.
There will be no City proclamations when I turn fifty this Sunday. There won’t be any uncharacteristic acts of either charity or cunning. There will be no gift and no theft. There won’t even be an opportunity for dozens of people to marvel at me.
And so I will simply try to have an honest fiftieth birthday. That is not to say it will be honest at all; I am no more honest than anyone else, nor any more noble, nor any less criminal, ever cracking open a Modelo on a pleasant strip of road. My only wish for it has become to have a day that is honest to my self. It will be a day that will likely include mass because it’s Sunday, friends because they put up with me, Playa Del Rey because it’s breezy, my parents’ grave because it’s where I can connect, Zen because it’s playful, and a steak and a martini, because that’s the way I like to celebrate things. In this way, it will be, truly, like any other birthday. And in this way, it will be, truly, uniquely me, uniquely me at fifty years of age.
