Birthday Musings.

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 39, 3x13, and it was a beautiful day. Pools of golden sunlight, green growing gently, water running laughingly. It lead me to think what heaven might be, and my answer is a single golden day relived over and over, with the past and future muddy distances. A day of love and light, laughter and music, slow and meandering. A day without anything extraordinary but the perfection of ordinary things. Fresh baked bread, a breeze over water, smiles and jokes.

39. Thirty nine. No real meaning, just a number. Older than Alexander the Great or Jesus, younger than Lao-Tsu or Julius Caesar. I have thought more often recently as a result of my increasing age of my memory of my father at the same age that I am presently, because I can for the first time remember him at an age I am. Not to judge or compare, but simply to think about it, to know him better.

While driving in my SUV, stroking my wild red beard, with a black wolf in the back, mexican accordion music playing, on an infinitely wide and sunny Texan boulevard, I wondered, "How did I get here?" It's a ridiculous place to have got to from the painfully shy english boy I was. There's nothing wrong with ridiculous.

I am reading a book recommended to me by my darling wife. A book of India, with stories within stories, attitudes and philosophies changing depending on the situation of the story. I find myself while reading some books, and usually the better ones, becoming immersed in the mood and language of the book. I take the pace of the story, the flavour of the places, the character of the hero with me into the rest of my world. It changes the way I speak, what I notice, the decisions I make. How about you?