Double Shot and Some Old

I had a plan for this phase of my life but it seems the person who wrote that plan may not be the guy who made it through to this day. I am planning my classes for the fall. Dramatic only to me, exciting perhaps on a layer I hadn't anticipated. Photo and sculpture, two strategies diverse and specific and open.

In the fall of 2002 I started art college, the instructors with whom I felt carried the most clout, were the same age as I am today. I remember thinking they were the right age for teaching. I remember thinking how knowledgeable they were. I anticipate fronting that same confidence in my classroom. I will lecture to 90 photo students and 15 sculpture kids on different days and different topics.

Tonight they are forcing drinks into me, tomorrow they want to stand around and cook things and tell me congrats on my retirement from my early thirties and my graduation into the "Countdown to 40 Club" I am sure it will be lovely, I have a history of themed birthdays and full out pourings of thrill into July 14th. Today has been just the right amount of calm, it always feels like I am some undercover agent on a mission on my birthday. Like I have a fancy secret, and no-one knows they should treat me really nice because I just got older all of a suddener! I also keep expecting to be handed something soft and creamy and flaming, but so far I've only seen some eggs Florentine and two fish tacos, neither of them ablaze, sadly, but Sam made the day good.

When I was a child I would spend every birthday in the sun, brown and blackening my hide, bleaching and washing out my hair color until they had to drag me inside at night. Two more coffees and maybe I will be vibrating with the enthusiasm of the six year old who took his own training wheels off with the big crescent wrench and then mounted his steel machine and careened full speed and cackling like the bi-plane dare devil wing walking through a burning building down the driveway and through the front yard over the hill and into the backyard just feet from the edge of the ridge above the rushing traffic below. We almost lost a lawnmower over that hill, driver and all just a few days ago.

If you are looking across the room right now at that young son and thinking about his potential, double it, try to imagine him traveling the world and expanding his imagination into space, try to imagine him orbiting the planet, imagine him exploring the wreck of the Titanic in his homemade submarine. His dreams are limited only by his imagination but it starts with your ability to imagine he can, I was given that gift on each and every birthday. I was given the gift of faith in me, the gift of naivety, I didn't know how big to grow or how far away to wonder. But I always knew and still know the foundation that I built this man on, I am who I wanted to be, I am in the place that makes the most sense, I am still expanding and still taking off training wheels, cause there comes a time to risk the scrape on the knee and throw yourself into gravity, eyes open, screaming at the top of your lungs blazing a path straight into the sun.

Happy Birthday to me, and happy birthday to you, go ahead use mine it's big enough.