“Today is my birthday. I sort of remember parties and the presence of loved ones and friends in the past, but none of this will happen today. I am very distant, almost in exile from my own sentimentality. Besides, I couldn’t do anything about it, anyway. I just know that I won’t be 46 again. Even if I were a drunk and a singing Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day, wearing so much green that I could cover the entire of Australia like a billiard table, it would not favorably affect anyone. It would not have made sense for me to have told my fellow passengers on the morning train from Berkeley to San Francisco, none of whom I had ever seen before or would probably ever see again, that it was my birthday. If I had turned to the complete stranger sitting next to me as we traveled in the tunnel under San Francisco Bay, with fish swimming in the water above us, and said, “Today is my birthday. I’m 47,” it would have made everybody feel very uncomfortable. First, they would have pretended that I was talking to myself. It’s a lot easier to imagine that people are talking to themselves, rather than talking directly to you. When people are talking directly to you, it takes an added and more uncomfortable effort to ignore them. What if I had been more persistent and insisted that people know about this so-called personal holiday of myself, i.e., my birthday, and repeated, “Today is my birthday. I’m 47,” in a manner to show unmistakably that I was not talking to myself but was addressing my fellow strangers? It would have made things worse and filled people with an ominous dread. What was I going to do next? I had already said, “Today is my birthday. I’m 47,” and then repeated it to everybody’s uncomfortable and growing dissatisfaction. They all knew now that I was capable of anything. Would I reveal 20 sticks of dynamite strapped to my body and hijack the train, demanding that we all be taken to my birthday planet Uranus, legendary sanctuary and powerhouse of Aquarius? Some of the passengers would be riding on the edge of panic. They could see themselves as a newspaper headline: TRAIN HELD HOSTAGE BY MAN CELEBRATING BIRTHDAY. Others would just want to get to where they were going on time. There are always the practical among us. They sort out the priorities and expect nothing more. I of course said nothing on the train. I was a good passenger. I kept my mouth shut and got off at my appointed station. I just know that I won’t be 46 again.”
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kaledo-art
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