BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (23)
By:
September 15, 2022
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, delivering brief remarks on mottos, mantras, speeches, slogans, and other words to live by. Series edited by Adam McGovern.
It’s Never Too Late
A friend once asked me “what do you want to be?” and I was moved by the audacious certainty of the question. The idea that I, who was 50 at the time, still had the potential to be other than I already am. Then they corrected themselves saying “or what did you want to be?” but I chose to un-hear that, wanting instead a few moments to live in the possibilities. What do I want to be? Could I really be something other than this?
I can’t think of anything more frightening.
I used to have daydreams of disappearing, uprooting without looking back, giving up everything and beginning anew, putting my cherry back so it can be popped again. I always admired that German couple Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch who, in 1929, left their lives behind and just moved to an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. I always thought what balls they must have had. I always wished I had that German couple’s balls.
But I didn’t then. I was one of those stupid kids when I was a stupid kid who hoped I would be dead before 50. One of those kids who spent too much time asking stupid questions like if a butterfly flapped its wings differently, a flap burp, would I be straight? If my mom didn’t smoke would I be beautiful, would my teeth be aligned, would I be cross eyed? Did what I ate, what I watched, what I saw make me or was it what I didn’t eat, watch, see?
And then when I did turn 50, I refused to believe I was that old. That is ridic I used to think, and I didn’t finish the word, because that is how young I thought I was. I say ridic, I am not old enough to say ulous.
It would be a few more years and a couple of “life events” for me to finally find my balls (turns out I didn’t need the German couple’s). I found them by saying Yes. That simple. I started saying yes to things that, in the past, I would have been afraid to say yes to. Now I realize that that was what I wanted to be. I wanted to be someone who says yes. It has changed my life and now, at 57, I am finding more success in more places than I ever would have expected. Blind Melon says in their song “Change,” “life is hard, you have to change” and as much as change scares me I know that I have to embrace it.
Nowadays, I spend my time thinking more constructive things like how did I become that tortoise fucking that hare at the finish line. How did I become Aesop’s top?
BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Ran Xia on BLACK CROW BELIEFS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on LEFT-CORNER BRICK | Andrea Diaz on JOY IS RESISTANCE | Lynn Peril on TO THINE OWN SELF | Miranda Mellis on THE FUTURE IS PASSÉ | Bishakh Som on LET THE WEIRDNESS IN | Lucy Sante on FLAUBERT’S PERFECT WORD | Stefene Russell on CRYSTAL SETS | Crystal Durant on LIFE IS A BANQUET | Adam McGovern on EVERY MINUTE AN OCEAN | Josh Glenn on LUPUS LUPUM NON MORDET | Heather Quinlan on SHUT UP, HE EXPLAINED | Adrienne Crew on WATCH YOUR PENNIES | Art Wallace on COME ON AND GIVE A CHEER | Julia Lee Barclay-Morton on WILLIAM JAMES, UNADAPTED | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on TO EACH HIS OWN | Nikhil Singh on ILLUMINATE OR DISSIPATE? | Mimi Lipson on CHEAP FOOD TASTES BETTER | Kahle Alford on NOT GONNA CRACK | Michele Carlo on YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT | Marguerite Dabaie on WALKING ON WATER | Raymond Nat Turner on TRYIN’ AND TRANEIN’ | Bob Laine on WHEN YOU GROW UP | Fran Pado on THE SMILEY EMOJI | Deborah Wassertzug on PLACING YOUR BETS. PLUS: BLURB SERIES CODA by Lisa Levy.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!