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happy birthday
to mee listening: cold cold
heart norah jones So about a year ago it was this. I guess for this entry I should snap into a reflective mood. Ah, to be 22! My last year that the second digit of my age is less or equal to the first digit of my age until the next eight years! (If you cannot understand the significance of this then I can't help you.) Before I know it I'll be 33 (the age I plan to pause before answering age-related questions, putting the interrogator in great suspense and unease, because his/her question before that would be whether I wear anti-aging night cream, which the answer to would most probably be no), then 44 (the age I plan to start lying about my age and start an anti-aging night cream regime), then 55 (the age I plan to sign up for cryogenic experiment, a technology I'm sure will be perfected in 33 years from now) and if I actually live up to the world's roughly average life expectancy (roughly average because I'm actually not sure what the actual figure is and cannot be arsed to read Newsweek), 66 (waiting for cryogenic technology to be foolproof, just in case it hasn't when I'm 55. Surely it can't be taking more than 44 years?) Ooh, yes, reflective mood. Right. It's been a pretty good year. Except for a few things that I really wished didn't happen, but they did anyway, and there wasn't really anything I could do about them. But other than that, nothing spectacularly sad or exciting, just some minor bumps and jumps here and there to keep it from getting too dull. Which in my book rates as just superb. This should be a momentous, nail-bitingly exciting year, final year of studying and all that. But I don't know, nothing in my planner that I haven't been planning since the last three, four years. Really, the element of surprise is just something that keeps you watching The Sixth Sense for the first time, but in real life it's really an overrated, romantic notion. We'd do anything to avoid it, we seek gossips and rumours, we read the weather forecast, we read the review before going to the movies, we plan and we plan and we plan. And usually they work, then surprise is just a word for that feigned look of amazement, out of gratefulness, when your friends arranged a surprise birthday party for you, which of course, you had found out about a week earlier because there's always a snitch. (note: just in case you're wondering, I didn't have a surprise birthday party. The date was just glaringly obvious. We almost couldn't be bothered to even have a quite decent, non-surprising birthday party. 'We', because my housemate and I share the same birthdate. Same day of the same year! What are the odds? How cool is that?) But of course, if life really wants to surprise you, then you'll be really, really, surprised. How did this happen? Why? That rare, pure look of shock, being hit by the unexpected, because it doesn't happen very often. And it's usually a bad sort of surprise, because a good sort of surprise usually comes with hints, someone always wants to tell you something's good coming your way. We all like to be messengers of happy news. Bad surprises. The reason we extol the virtues of planning. Why did I talk about this? I wanted to tell you about my 22nd birthday.
previous entry: your next bold move (july 30, 2002) |
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