I was going to blog the obvious about my birthday yesterday, that 51 is a true anti-climax. Turning 50 last year was a delight, surrounded by my friends in town and again out on the edge of wilderness. This year, eh. There’s a reason you don’t know any songs or poems celebrating 51. Such a small step towards the second half of a century, just a drop accreting to the 50 already gone.

But I like having birthdays, and not just because it beats the alternative. Between us, I revel in being the center of attention; better, the center of ritual. It’s my day, damn it, and I want everyone to enjoy it.

And so I am blessed to have friends far and near who remember my day even though I so often forget theirs. Friends who know they should ignore my oft professed need for solitude, which is really just my defense against the drain of energy required to really be present for others. Good friends who bring me food, cake and cigars and send me email, books, CDs and cards. I no longer wonder what I did to deserve such friends — I know I couldn’t have done anything to be so lucky. peace, mjh

Ah, Wilderness!: San Pedro Parks Wilderness Birthday Trip

Last Wednesday, I woke up feeling a bit blah. I’ll spare you the details of what we euphemistically call “stomach flu,” but my condition deteriorated rapidly from there. Soon, my whole world contracted to two spaces: my bed and the bathroom. Before long, taking care of myself meant laying immobile for as long as I could, listening with curiosity to my own ragged grunts. I’m not whining; I’ve been sicker and know people in far worse conditions. But, I was more than sick enough, thank you very much.

For days, I had thunderstorms in the arroyos of my guts. They raged from left to right and back again. I sounded like a giant jug knocked on its side, contents burbling out.

Completely drained and wrung out, my worst symptoms stopped and I was left in this limbo of “relatively better.” I measured progress in sitting up for a few minutes longer. I watched more TV than usual — some of the stuff I saw on KNME was so lovely it helped me a bit: pictures of New Mexico and Utah set to classical music and poetic narration. I saw a video I want to loop in my final hours.

I can’t say that I thought a lot that is worth remembering. But I did think about loss of capacity; about being unable to decide for oneself; being so dependent on others.

I thought about aging and the struggle between acceptance and resistance to many things that may be inevitable in spite of our resistance or made so by our acceptance. I’ve come no closer to wisdom.

I thought about god and the atheist’s dilemma in not having anyone to blame or beg. Thankfulness is a different matter — it doesn’t require a recipient.

Being an optimist and not THAT sick, I knew I would recover in time, even after a few false starts. Today, 5 full days after the onset, I feel the best I have since this began, though still weak. I finally *want* food — interesting food. I want to photograph flowers. I want to write. I want a haircut! mjh

photo and haircut by MRudd

Lately, my hair has grown beyond the dandelion charm of Einstein to the look of the love child of Shirley Temple and Charles Manson. It’s a mop befitting a clown with huge balls of curls cum tumbleweeds piled below the sparse meadow that once was my glory. My negative-mohawk. For old men, hair moves like landslides, denuding the peaks and gathering in the valleys and ear canals below.

So, cut your hair already. (Or, rather, have Merri cut it as she has for over 20 years.) I don’t participate in very many rituals that are imposed on me, prefering to satisfy my human need for ritual through some of my own making. Over the years, my hair has played an important role in many of these rituals. I cut my braid on more than one anniversary of my Mother’s death. I had my friends shave my head at 40 (in Chaco Canyon). I shaved my head again for my 50th and then resolved to go unkempt for a full year following. I’m still 4 weeks away from the anniversary of my last haircut. I’m beginning to think the wisdom of age is to suspend rituals that do no good. mjh

Happy 4/7 everyone! Someone did a search of my site at 7:47am this morning. mjh

The Meaning of 47

When I was in junior high, I dreaded Saint Patrick’s Day. I had no idea who St. Patrick was, just that the day would be an occasion when I had to let my peer’s dictate how I dressed myself and, in effect, force me to choose sides in a senseless religious war involving two factions of a religion that means nothing to me. Choose the wrong side — or try to stay out of it altogether — and suffer physical and verbal abuse.

And then, just a short time later, along comes April Fool’s Day. I’ve always been troubled by April Fool’s pranks. Often, an effort is made to come up with a gag that is as believable as possible. When someone falls for it, the prankster jeers “April Fool!” If the victim raises any objection, the prankster berates the victim as humorless (for an example, see the discussion at www.dukecityfix.com). Perhaps there are superb pranks that leave everyone laughing, but I think many April Pranksters are simply bullies. Maybe, as Halloween institutionalizes extortion and vandalism, April Fool’s gives us one day to not only lie with impunity but to revel in it — but that’s every day of the Bush Era.

I’m sure each of us has failed to get a joke from time to time. We all seem to forget that when someone doesn’t get our jokes. But, when a joke falls flat, it may be best to keep moving and let it go. If you have to berate someone for not getting it, it’s no longer funny, if it ever was. mjh

WTFWJD Sticker

The next time you’re faced with a moral quandry that could result in your spiritual ruin, try this: Stop, take a deep breath to calm your ass down, and ask “What the fuck would Jesus do?” WTFWJD?

[via NewMexiKen]