purple hamster

"My birthday began with the water -
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days"

'Poem in October' from Dylan Thomas' Collected
Poems ( London: Phoenix, 2003)

today, i knew what it felt like to be old. and something inside me died.

i have (and after today, will probably continue to maintain, altho my heart ain't innit) always said that a female stops aging at 18, no matter how many years get in the way. especially in aussie, where people continue to ask me to prove that i'm not jailbait (omg, do i really plass for 16? *squeals*) but yeah.

i have seen councils that officially call me great-grand senior. i have seen people fight for their lives with diseases that used to be the domain of the elderly, and i have lost these same friends. i have seen friends lose the will to live, their trust in love, life, and all things beautiful.

i have seen friends change, more then i ever thought possible, some a beautiful metamorphasis into people of character and strength and wisdom (and thus i get to learn from the best *iloveyoutoohon*. and you mydear, smile for me, friends are always better then lovers, he's not worth it, anymore) and some into people i really do not know anymore, warped by dispair, frustration and grief.

and as i watch my friends celebrate 2 decades and 1, i recon that altho my day will come and go quietly, i hope i will stop and think about all that the years have brought. i hope to be able to say that i am proud of all that i am, altho not of all that i've done, and i hope that no matter where life takes me, i will be remembered fondly as one who loved life. insipid mortality? i guess so, while most of us feel like we are invincible and immortal, life has other plans for me. a $10 dollar sandwhich does not a feast beget, and altho life doesn't necessarily give us what we want, we do also get the option of enjoying what we get.

it's like the sunscreen song. it tells us (not in so many words) that life is precious, and we usually only realise it when it's too late. i often wonder what would the world be like if we actually enjoyed life. a radical world i supposed, but what if? why do we build expecations of ourselves and other, build prejudice and hate, but yet not simply each other? why can't will distil what we want from life, and drink of it?

dance like no one is watching. it's more powerful then you think. i practised shines last night in my bedroom, unaware that i was watched by my neighbour, who takes latin lessons with me. this morning, on the way to school, she remarked that the purity of focus on my face, was never evident in class (where i'm called shy?!?!) it makes me wonder what life would be like, uncoloured by perception of other people's opinions.

i think, and there for i am, but i love and therefore i will always be. the challenge is to love, but intellegently. live, but with a love of life. hope, in the quintessential things that make us who we are. dream, of reaching beyond our endurance, our powers and passions, to reach our defining root metaphor.

maybe dylan thomas had it right. but we shouldn't rage against the dying of the light. maybe we should rage to make the light our life.

Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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