And I’m not quite sure what “it” is. But we like our cultural moments, all those signifiers that blend into the montage we think of as our lives, our histories. It’s funny, I am sitting here thinking I Am An Early Thirty-Something as it should be perceived in the “western” world for this dawn of 2012.
What does this turn of the gregorian calendar really mean for myself, historically? Well, honestly, throughout most of my life and formative years, not much. The Jewish new year was more cause for celebration, and my parents didn’t see the real need to ring in the new year with the rest of the pagan-appropriating world during the northern hemisphere’s “dead” season. Things are certainly different between now and then, but whatever. Sometimes I miss their cultish “sensibilities” over what they’ve given themselves to now in the older meaning of political correctness unrevised by Rush Limbaugh.
It’s nice, I guess, that it signifies something now, this new year I enter into living with my partner in a much smaller space that we’re both not necessarily accustomed to sharing with another person. I related to him the larger apartments and duplexes I had had on my own, completely furnished and filled, and didn’t really feel any nostalgia for those spaces. They were nice to have as a single person, but they were more or less places to collapse after being worked over while I did a stint in middle management. I learned to deal with a much more cramped spot when I rented a room last semester in an utterly disgusting house. Prior to that, I had felt I rung in my traditional holiday set as I moved out of the house my ex-husband and I shared into an efficiency. I likened it to my new “booth” for a new year without him as I knew them from when we went off to furnished little condos and such during Sukkot when I was a child.
So we’re working through our boxes to get our space cozy enough to live in, to nerd out in without staring at the boxes taking up way too much room. I have my red wine, the Pixies sound nice through the overhead speakers…yes, okay, I feel a pull to be content with the things that are supposed to slickly define a cool 30-something-year-old. Truth be told, I didn’t think I would live until this age when I was 20. I was doing a lot of stupid things; some people I knew had died for some preventable reasons, and things just didn’t look all that good for me. I am glad to be here with my partner now, to feel some amount of safety in that I don’t have a large probability of dying from getting to and fro like I did while I was staying at my last place. I feel like I’ve lived ten lives already while reveling in the energy my youth and health still afford me; every day’s a gift no matter how fucked up it all is, no matter how much it has already been capitalized on. I feel okay — I feel happy to be able to love and hang on and be there for someone who wants to work on loving as action as well. A little bit of soundtrack, why not…
