New Romanticism

I’ve spent a lot of my time caught up with ages and dates. Used them as sporadic milestones, goals, randomly attached meaning to them and waited for something to happen as if the simple passage of time would instantly present me with an answer and turn me into a writer.

I was born on October 12th 1981, my mother was 18.

I spoke to my friend on the phone for an hour and eight minutes this morning and she, using astrology, reassured what I had been thinking but successful in ignoring. I should be writing, doing what I always said I would and what these 28 years have been silently prepping me for. According to armchair astrologers and my friend, Saturn’s Return happens between the ages of 27-30 and as stated in the ever-reliable Wikipedia it means this: if during those years, a person is living out of touch with their true values Saturn, with it’s planetary strength, will force the person to reevaluate and discard old and un useful ways of being, whether it’s a career path, relationship, routine etc.

The reason I feel at odds with myself in my current career while validating data in Oracle and repeating myself like a very computer savvy plumed bird to people every Monday morning is simple; I am supposed to be doing something else and thankfully that stubborn planet Saturn will not let me forget this and, it turns out, Saturn is relentless.

When I was in college I already felt so far behind in the game having transferred from community college. I should have known the New Testament better, been better with names and dates. I should have been published by 23. I should have read more Shakespeare.  I never should have dated that short guy who drove that Camaro and took up precious library time and made me act like a teenager. When I was in college all I could focus on were the things I should have done and at that point, even though I didn’t know it, none of those things mattered. It was all past just as fast as it was taking place.

In the time I spent on the Romantic period only one thing stood out to me and that was this:

John Keats died at 25 and with quite a stunning writers resume. WTF. I am such a loser.

In school, as I sat in that grad student workshop, the lone undergrad with plans of beer pong and seven layer dip on my mind I shared my writing because I felt that I knew something that needed to be expressed no matter how trivial my day to day interactions were.

Years have passed and I have been on some other path. I got married in Lake Tahoe on a whim, moved out of my comfortable apartment just as indiscriminately only to find that parking is impossible and it’s lonely being 40 miles away from the old-standby bar where I’m sure to run into someone I know and the Monday night trivia is tough never fails to only give 12 points.

During the time I was commuting on the Caltrain to work I read five books and proved to myself that I would never be in the caliber of writer that I followed in those pages so untouchable and I’m okay with that. The reality is many modern readers in this time and space rarely read at all but rather watch and scan, have fleeting interests and goals with attention spans to match. My writing might never reach the level of all those books that sit at the end of my bed and who’s "about the author" pages I savor and admire but if I don’t try I’m going to always have this gnawing compulsion in me that never fails to come out after a couple of wheat beers.

I am 10 years older than my mom was when I was born and of course after the shocking and unanticipated wedding the word baby pops up here and there and I think about the future and what I would feel like if I had a daughter who had a dream that forever sat at some foggy distance neither close nor far and how that would make me sad but, depending on her age, I would probably know that sooner or later Saturn will rear it’s gigantic, imposing round head and remind her that there is more to life than new boots and boys, computers and status updates.

I guess what I am saying is I am a writer. Not going to be, not want to be, not merely supposed to be. I just am.

Thank you Saturn.

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