for some reason, 37 feels like a big year. i am now in my late 30s. when i see it written on the page, it feels weird, especially because i can remember so vividly in my early 20s, thinking that someone i knew who was 37 was "OLD". i mean O-L-D!
it's funny, though: the older i get, the less i worry about it, and being 37 doesn't bother me, really. i feel good about where i am, i have very few regrets about the things i've done (mainly regrets about the things i've not done). if i meet someone for whatever reason who is 20 or 22 and if they think i am OLD, it matters so little to me now because 22 seems so YOUNG and the things people do at 22 mainly just seem idiotic or immature to me (hahaha, no offense to anyone who's 22; i did a TON of idiotic and immature things when i was in my early 20s).
but some things i do notice: creaks in my body that weren't there 10 years ago; wrinkles (of course), grey hairs starting (luckily i still have all my hair and haven't started losing it at all knock wood); though i am in pretty good shape for someone in his late 30s, i have to WORK at it and i can't just eat anything like i did when i was 25. but that's OK. i'm probably actually healthier overall because i do have to be conscious of what i eat and getting exercise.
and relatively speaking, 37 is still young, especially when one considers that people live well into their 80s nowadays.
sometimes i do feel a bit of pressure, that now i'm nearly 40 and i don't own a house or drive a $60,000 car, especially since i don't have any kids. but this only bothers me slightly and only once in a while (and only when i'm in north america); most of the people i know who have big important jobs and a lot more money than we do HATE their jobs and/or work all the time and, in many ways, are trapped with all the things they own. so i do have to remind myself of that. money's not an issue (anyway, having a car in downtown montreal is a PAIN) and we have plenty, money in the bank (i would be willing to bet we save more money than people who make twice what we do: one big reason? no car payment, no auto insurance, no parking fees, no maintenance!), and i do what i do because i like it and it offers me a lot of flexibility, we can travel a lot, we have friends all over the world. mainly i feel lucky.
but, of course, things are never perfect. i worry about the future, how long can i do the work that i am doing? i have no job security. if my job(s) tanked, we'd HAVE to go back to asia since all i can do is teach here and that is something i just can NOT do. and though we may go back to asia one day, i want to go because it's right and not because i have to. the only goal i have in my life is to try and be happy, whatever that means. right now it means getting my life set up so that i can have a base somewhere but spend 2-3 months each year traveling (if our base is here in montreal that means leaving for the WINTER every year) and 1 month or so seeing my family and friends that are scattered all over.
blah blah blah forgive the self-indulgence but this is my dec 31 tradition, maybe everyone's. but doubly for me since i gain a year, too.
bye bye 36: you done me good...
some hick town in louisiana is relieved that they no longer have to use 666 as a telephone prefix. apparently, since the 1960s, the town has been lobbying the state government to force the telephone company to change the prefix since many people associate this number with oooohhh the devillllllll ooooooohhhh. what cracks me up is that the mayor or somesuch person considered it "divine intervention" that the townsfolk will now have a choice and people can "opt out" of satan's prefix. apparently, god's intervention has been a bit slow since they've been prayin' for the last FORTY-FIVE years! but hey, better late (having lived with satan's spawn-number for that long) is better than never!
i hope the townsfolk at least had the sense to keep handguns in their houses just in case the devil should call someone up using his preferred telephone prefix. i wonder if these people also drink gasoline and dance around with snakes on sundays at church....amen.
best books (not necessarily books published in 2007 but books i encountered):
best movies seen in 2007:
1) snow snow snow.
2) it's 11.18, i'm still working and masa is in the bath. we had a very busy day running errands and hanging out at marie's to help her out since she came back from the US tonight. made dinner, cleaned up, chatted with her. she is SO PREGNANT and miserable! feel tired but happy. it's nice to be home after being out in the snow all day stomping all over the plateau.
3) we are on an odd schedule the last two weeks: we sleep every morning until 11.30...but we don't fall asleep at night until 3 or so. i like how our schedule shifts around like cycles: when we first got back from argentina, we fell asleep every night at 9!! and i was up every morning at 4am. now we've shifted back to a nearly opposite schedule. sleeping so late makes the day feel like it flies by. in a bad way.
4) so much to write about that's on my mind the last few days: bhutto and the mess of pakistan (the entire bhutto generation now wiped out, she was the last one), a book i'm reading about afghanistan. work. tigers and being attacked while at the zoo. christmas gifts: the new gao xingjian book my sister gave me and the cool shirt i'd been eyeing in a shop window for ages that masa bought for me. what a lucky guy i am that i have a comfortable place to live, people around me who love me and a job that allows me all kinds of flexibility! but i just can't write lately, i mean here. i just don't have the energy to blog. it'll come back soon, all my verbose ramblings!
5) heroes. good. not excellent. but entertaining and interesting. 30 rock? hiLARious (though much of the humor is too culturally-based for poor masa to get).
6) 2007. my year of 36. yes, i get all "what does it all mean" at the end of each year since it's by birthday when the new year arrives. but more about that later, i guess.
7) insomnia. bad insomnia. when i say we fall asleep at 3, i mean the lights go off. i usually wake up again at 4.30 or 5 and get up or read or sit and look out the window at the dark and quiet streeet like some weirdo. at 7 or 8 i can usually fall back asleep but this morning i couldn't until past 9. i think it's the lack of sunlight that messes up my sleeping patterns...i always have this problem in the dead of winter...
8) oh, that reminds me of a GREAT movie from the 80s called "dead of winter" with mary steenburgen. spoooky.
i am just SO not into blogging lately. not sure why.
nothing new really going on: working a lot but things are done for two weeks, at least some things. still got a couple of projects to undertake, but i can work at my own pace until early january.
been watching tv shows on dvd, our usual winter thing. we rented some shows that people have been talking about for a while (yes, we're just getting around to these shows which have both been on for a while), 30 rock and heroes. both interesting. wanna write more, but naaah.
anyway, we've got nothing exciting planned for today: make some cupcakes, take a long hot bath, cook something indian-ish for dinner, and settle down to dvds and some chardonnay...
masa's little pipe cleaner christmas tree. it's tiny -- those are rings there and a piece of garlic (!??) and an argentine calendar. merry christmas, everyone!
ok this is old and i have no idea what is so funny. but everytime i see this, i can't stop laughing...
1) what does it mean to be innocent? i don't mean of a crime or of an action but generally: when we say "so and so is so innocent..." what does this mean? it can mean sexually inexperienced, but i think it's much more than that. i would even say that someone can have lots of sexual experience and be "innocent," but this perhaps is more of my own idea about what i mean when someone is innocent. i would also say that someone can have no sexual experience and NOT be innocent.
to me innocence means a belief in people, not in any rational way, but just an ability to take things at their face value, to not (or not be able to) read between the lines. in this way, perhaps, innocence could mean naive, but isn't that what innocence means? i mean when we say someone is naive, aren't we also saying that they are innocent?
one thing: people who say "i'm so innocent" usually are not.
2) christmas is so odd. yesterday in the shops, i was amazed at the frenzy that was in the air. everyone looked so determined and focused, frazzled and irritable. no one smiled. no one looked happy. the shops were packed and every cash register had a long line clogging it up, peopled with bored, exhausted faces. all the amazing things we can spend money on! i never realized how much CRAP we are forced to wade through: plastic cereal bowls with the faces of serial killers emblazoned on them (as you finish off your corn flakes in the morning you can stare down into a picture of jeffrey dahmer or son of sam); plastic boxes of stones with "inspirational" words cut into them: "calm," or "relaxation" or "dreams". WTF? i wish i had a friend i could both to: serial bowls and hokey deepak chopra stones. talk about mixed messages. am i becoming a stodgy old man or are we just barraged with crap today and contradictory messages about what we are supposed to do with our lives/money/time?
still. it's good to get out of the house! man the last few weeks i've not felt up to anything and been working like mad. finished out the term yesterday, took a day off today before starting into some other projects. and we went to a nice cocktail party earlier in the week that was a lot of fun. and 10 more days of being 36.
3) decided to read something as anti-christmasy as i can. actually, that's not totally true. in a small plateau bookstore i found this hardbound edition of charles dickens' christmas stories yesterday and was happy: it had original drawings and it was a huge book, something that would have been nice to read over the weekend. as i went to pay, the woman glared at me and said "oh this was part of a set. where did you get this?" i pointed to a table where i had picked the book up from. she said "no. you can't buy this book. you can only buy the set" and while i do like a good charles dickens tale, i wasn't about to drop $350 for a collection of his 23 best works. how would i get it home anyway? i decided after that (it's the third bad experience i've had in a shop the last three days: these shopkeepers get all cocky during christmas time i guess), i would boycott reading anything christmasy (sign from god?) and came home to read georges simenon's novel dirty snow. a novel about a french killer in german-occupied paris. the opening scene is of him killing a commissioned officer in a dark snowbound alley. not exactly a tale laden with peace on earth but befitting my mood the last few weeks. anyway, it seems to involve both innocence and contradictory messages, so i guess that's why it struck such a chord with me.
maybe i should buy those serial bowls after all.
i was against putting up a tree this year, what a scrooge i am. but masa wanted to, so we trudged through the snow yesterday (a LOT of snow) and found a cute one, then came home and put it up; it cheered me up. i put on some christmas music, poured a glass of wine, made cookies and chili while masa put the lights on, etc.
now it feels like christmas.
