I turned 22 one week ago today, and this gives me the shameless right to pull the "Well, it's my birthday!" card with a narcissistic post on - you guessed it - birthdays.
In his book The Movie-Goer, Walker Percy writes, "On this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing left to do but fall prey to desire." Inspired, I've thought a bit about what I know on this, my 22nd birthday, and what I hope for from the years to come.
On Becoming a Palindrome
What does it mean to turn twenty-two?
In a burst rather golden, with a little of blue
With a grand lyric blast (was that a tear, too?)
Oh, the heart can still hurt when you turn twenty-two.
Your dreams on their strings may glide near at your tug
To your strange, sweet delight there's a new sort of love
And you wear your years light as a silken-cloak hug
The world's a pearl-oyster when you're at the start of
Twenty-two.
But there's a slight feeling, now that school's done -
Oh wear am I going? And where am I from?
Abandon all hope, or after joy's red rose run?
(The choices are rife now you've passed twenty-one.)
At twenty-two, drink from life's goblet your fill
Live with abandon (at moments, be still)
Sow wide of your days and reap in a rich till
(For you can't quite forget, in the years' churning mill;)
I now have at least fifty more years to kill.
One final, slightly more cheery, thought on birthdays; specifically what I hope for mine in years to come. In the words of Wendell Berry:
To Tanya on my Sixtieth Birthday
What wonder have you done to me?
In binding love you set me free.
These sixty years the wonder prove:
I bring you aged a young man's love.
-LC
In his book The Movie-Goer, Walker Percy writes, "On this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing left to do but fall prey to desire." Inspired, I've thought a bit about what I know on this, my 22nd birthday, and what I hope for from the years to come.
On Becoming a Palindrome
What does it mean to turn twenty-two?
In a burst rather golden, with a little of blue
With a grand lyric blast (was that a tear, too?)
Oh, the heart can still hurt when you turn twenty-two.
Your dreams on their strings may glide near at your tug
To your strange, sweet delight there's a new sort of love
And you wear your years light as a silken-cloak hug
The world's a pearl-oyster when you're at the start of
Twenty-two.
But there's a slight feeling, now that school's done -
Oh wear am I going? And where am I from?
Abandon all hope, or after joy's red rose run?
(The choices are rife now you've passed twenty-one.)
At twenty-two, drink from life's goblet your fill
Live with abandon (at moments, be still)
Sow wide of your days and reap in a rich till
(For you can't quite forget, in the years' churning mill;)
I now have at least fifty more years to kill.
One final, slightly more cheery, thought on birthdays; specifically what I hope for mine in years to come. In the words of Wendell Berry:
To Tanya on my Sixtieth Birthday
What wonder have you done to me?
In binding love you set me free.
These sixty years the wonder prove:
I bring you aged a young man's love.
-LC
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