re: born

Today I turn thirty-five.

I have never been older.

The way it's told, the night I was born 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operatic trippy science fiction flick by the incomparable Stanley Kubrick was broadcast on TV. Fault it however you will in spite of its tempered pacing and ennui inducing overture, but little can conflict with the edict that it stands as an influential classic. I've always supposed there must have been something in the water that night, since the drooling babe born in that Jersey hospital with my likeness would be drawn to film, music, and science fiction as well as dream of becoming a renegade filmmaker who dissects the eternal struggles of the human psyche. It never surprised me that I finished writing my first feature length screenplay in the year 2001.

We all come from somewhere.

And I don't mean the seemingly unsexy by-product of the end credit scroll of some roll in the hay. I simply mean that our physiological oak tree was once but an acorn. The ways and means the evolution comes about fascinates me. I think of the television series LOST, which my fiancée and I recently re-watched in its entirety, upon receiving it as a Christmas gift. Without the distraction of poor choice of company and interfering personal dramas that belied our respective first time viewings, so much more surfaced within this multi-textured program.

With much of the plot line being shrouded in mystery for many of the early seasons, there is a satisfying turn when some of the gnawing questions begin to find answers. I think life is like this. I think about turning thirty-five. There is far more power in that than there was at thirty or twenty-five or twenty-one or eighteen or any of the other key ages of yore. There's something truly exhilarating about seeing behind the curtain for longer stretches at a time, to catch a glimpse of how things work and what makes life worth living.

Deeper meaning rears its mischievous head right on schedule, every time. You just have to guide your vision a tad closer to see it. Show me a series of broken dishes, and I'll show you the excavation of the dashed dreams and cold conversation nibbled on at their side.

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