For the next 364 days I am living the dream.
44.
Shouldn’t have any problem remembering my age. 😉
Slightly facetious, but for some reason 43 just never felt “right”. Meaning I often responded to questions about my age as either 42 or 44.
At this age it is the simple things. It is all about perspective.
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
– C.S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” (1952)
Welcome to the second of two participation topics loosely linked to our group read of Neil Gaiman’s, The Graveyard Book. The first had a graveyard theme in keeping with the location of young Nobody Owens’ adventures and this second revolves around the idea of growing up, or coming of age, as that thread is woven throughout Gaiman’s young adult novel. In my particular instance I am coming at this topic as it relates to story, in film and in print form.
“There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir, We must rise and follow her; When from every hill of flame, She calls and calls each vagabond by name”
~William Bliss Carman
I have been hearing that call for some time now, haven’t you? Post-season baseball, fresh apple cider, haunted evenings, starlit nights, the orange glow of dying leaves and maturing pumpkins…could the promises whispered on the autumn winds be more enticing? Certainly not for me.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
~George Eliot
Although many of us started our autumn celebrations early, today it is official:
Autumn 2012 has arrived!
And here in Kansas City it arrived on the heels of an absolutely gorgeous, cool last day of summer. Not to be outdone, fair Autumn awoke with a sunny, breezy, high-temperature-of-68-degree day. Can you hear that? Can you hear my contented sigh? Ahhhhh…..
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
~Jack London
This past Saturday I arose before the warm glow of the morning sun to head out to what has recently become my favorite running grounds, Wyandotte County Lake Park. Last week it was for the Psychodelic 5K (Fire Version), this week it was for the Psycho Psummer 10 mile, 20 mile, and 50K. I was not to be a participant this time but was instead there to render service, to make a small effort to pay back a portion of the rather LARGE amount of joy I’ve received from the Trail Nerds organization over the last month.
For most of the morning and afternoon Shelter 11 (you can see my red truck parked out front) was my home, haven for weary runners looking for a quick recharge on their quest to conquer one, two, or three of the 10 mile loops. And, in my completely biased opinion, it was the most rockin’ aid station on the course.
