Time Ain't Changin' Nothin', Take A Look Around

I don't remember celebrating my birthday as a child.  I don't have memories of cake or any particular year, anyone singing.  I have a picture on a tricycle that I'm told was my 5th birthday but I don't recall it.  The only one I remember was my 21st.  My friend and I were to move to California in a couple of months and we were gonna make a party out of every night we could. We were in a perpetual state of bliss.  I broke up with my boyfriend ahead of time trying to be efficient but still had the girl-balls to ask him to hold our going away party at his house.  He was fun but I felt like I rode his last wave before he was about to give out.  I didn't harbor ill feelings though.  Even then I always saw life as a continuous.  Nothing started or ended.  If you were friends with anyone, you'd always be friends.  If there was once love there would always be love.   If you lived somewhere, you never really left.   

I bought a red dress to wear for my 21st b'day outing that reminded me of the Jetson's.  It was 1983. It was super cold and snowy out but I still wore red strappy sandals because, well I was 21.  We didn't have dates so we begged my old beau and his surly friend, who they called Angry Tom because he was always super grouchy, to take us out.  All the bars we waited years to get into were so lame, playing disco music, filled with stiffs and stagnant air.  We found ourselves better off coming back to their apartment, hitting the bong and me and B danced and laughed around the living room to Tom Petty's Long After Dark album while the boys kept drinking until they passed out.  We stayed up and dreamed of our new big lives in Fresno, California, just three hours away from the ocean.  In my mind, they would always be there as would everyone I ever cared for.  And I still believe that's true if we want it.  Everything is everything.

 

I'm not celebrating a special birthday today, but I am celebrating. 53.   I picked Beef Green Curry from National Thai my favorite and some noteworthy chocolate cakes from L.A. Burdick.  A nice shrimp fresh spring roll and fried tofu with a peanut butter dipping sauce.  Every year is a reason to believe time does not exist as we know it.