as february goes
I've had 65 of these now, with the 66th coming along in a few weeks. I think I lost count (or stopped counting) at 13.
That's when the fraught times started for real, when our family began the process of uprooting ourselves from the lovely, urbane but also bucolic southern Philippine city of Davao, at around the same time that the country was falling deeply into the clutches of a profoundly corrupt dictatorship whose venality would last a good decade and a half and from which we would ultimately escape, in 1980, but not before being wounded and psychically mutilated by it; itself a process that would take us decades further to heal from, and even that conclusion is a debatable one.
If the actuarial tables are generally right — and I have no reason to doubt that they're not — and given genetic circumstances, I have probably 10 more of these Februaries, if I can manage certain emergent conditions, or a dozen if I should be lucky. Or much fewer if the proverbial Mack truck hurtling down Polk or Bay or Van Ness provides the twist of fate and circumstance that none of us can predict or anticipate. Happily, I'm not given to morbidly fixating on such probabilities and have been constitutionally content to take each day as it comes, gifts that they are and have been for some time now.
This post might seem to be subtly suggesting that one has a largely jaundiced outlook on life, but that would be incorrect. In fact, one could marshal a contrariwise case for the opposite mindset, latching on to that stereotypically Filipino shoulder-shrug that is bahala na or leaving things to 'fate.' While I surely don't believe in fate, per se, I have been culturally steeped in the way I was for the first 2 decades of life to not gainsay the influence of some of it, in the way I view things, or move through my days.
From the perch atop this mound of sixty-five Februaries, I will grudgingly admit that long-term planning was never my long suit. I say 'grudgingly' as I subtly regret where that has brought me: to a kind of impasse, but one that is neither overweening or overwhelming. As to what exactly that impasse is... well, that shall remain in the 'dark matter' realms of the self. They emerge anyhow with some frequency in one's nightly dreaming, so there's no need to belabor them in the harsh daylight of wakefulness. ::chuckle::
Feeling that the day hadn't unspooled with enough equanimity, I decided to go for a late evening walk last night, and my steps took me through Fort Mason — where the Guardhouse 'museum' had an incredibly moving exhibit (about which I'll write another day) — through the deserted bluffs above Black Point where it was so dark on this moonless night that I could barely see a couple of steps ahead of me then down the point to Aquatic Cove. It was there I realized, finally, that, despite everything, all will be well in the end; each of these fleeting Februaries has been a treasure and there have been more than enough of them to define a life lucidly lived.
Any further ones will be an inestimable gift.
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