i thank you God for most this amazing.

I refuse demands for capitulation – I demand a celebration. Today is my birthday – today is the birth day of light, and of love and wings, and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.

It is – it actually is – my birthday. I have never been one for celebrating such things – but the older I get, and the less people I have around me who care, the more special it comes to seem. I have long scoffed at the silly emphasis people put on making a day special, but am slowly coming to realize that making a day “special” is just a way of staunching the boredom that flows in and out and permeates our daily existence placing a small marker tabbed upon one day that says our time here and ourselves are something more than an accumulation of ordinary days which began in squalling mucus and ends in a hoarse rattle of same.

I made today special by first, praying this morning. I know – sounds weird – but here is the realization I am coming to: As much as my brain, which cries out at the utter improbability, and lack of evidence for a deity, my soul needs NOT a deity to beg of, or to prevent a descent into darkness final at the end of my days – for an end to be an end is ok with me – but my soul needs someone to whom I can grateful.
It may sound strange to say it – but it is the realization I have been coming to. The reason I need a woman in my life pretty much almost all the time, (aside from for fucking, for company, for conversation, for attention,) is that I want someone to whom I can be nice – someone I can compliment – someone I can show attention to, and make smile. That is one of the main motivations, needs, I have, which cause me to seek out women. Similarly – my need for a deity is motivated largely by an excess of gratitude, of thanks for the sheer splendor of my life, which I cannot discharge in any direction absent a being who oversees all things. It’s a bit of a conundrum, I know.

I find that most of my interactions and conversations with God consist of my simply saying thank you, expressing how grateful I am that despite the idiocy that has characterized my life, I feel so richly surrounded by a wealth of good things. I know it could be simple chance – a roll of the chromosomal dice, a choice to walk here, a chance twist of the steering wheel there – it could be just an accumulation of chances that has resulted in my being so damn fortunate – but if so, I should not feel grateful – I should only feel lucky. And if I am only lucky, I need feel only relief – that I dodged a disaster, that I came out unscathed, that I owe no one for the fortunate spin of the wheel.

Yet I feel distinctly grateful – blessed. The fact that I am surrounded by others who may be equally fortunate does absolutely nothing to dilute my specific sense of joy. My mind teeters on the edge of explosm when I contemplate how uncommon is my particular lot – my life’s individual blend of pungent proclivities and aromatic assholery. To have the ability and option to travel, to see, to read, to write, to work or waste, to meet, to contemplate and converse, to dive, to drink, to fight, fuck and fidget. (You knew the alliteration would catch up with me eventually, didn’t you?)

But seriously – in a world where so much can go wrong – and in which “getting it right” is so ridiculously difficult – I feel as though I have, against all probabilities, especially given my wastrel and lackadaisical nature, ass-ended so far up Maslow’s hierarchy that I find myself nearly constantly nuzzling the nether-regions of self-actualization – something that I feel so many others who have worked so much harder and more conscientiously than myself have conspicuously failed to do.
So I began this morning by praying – by thanking God for yet another day – for yet another year – and for the utterly unimaginable good fortune of my life. I packed the lovely lunch a lovely lady had packed for me from the leftovers of the delightful dinner that she had fixed me last night in (unbeknownst to me) recognition of my impending birthday. (Apparently she had had some difficulty in deciphering which date was actually my birthday, as I habitually enter false ones on forms and websites.) Then I treated myself to a morning workout in the gym, doing only the exercises that I wanted to do. And now, writing this, I sit in a comfortable chair, in a warm office, drinking coffee and milk.

It is a world away from the sensations I recall when covering my face with a balaclava as I ascended a ladder anchored in snow, to hold a board of siding to nail it to a garage – or struggled to apply sufficient force to a freezing-cold iron crowbar, ripping free the wood from the nails that still stuck in the concrete around the forms, as the snowflakes swirled around my nose and eyes and the cold pain in my fingers became more insistent. I remember the misery of financial insecurity – of cold early mornings packing a pail of unappetizing food before exiting the house to face a day of drudgery and boredom – leaving the house in the dark, I would return again after dark, to eat alone what I had the energy to prepare.

I thank God for the health and wealth – the amazing richness of texture and flavor in my life today. I joy in every moment – I am grateful now even for the times of loneliness, pain, cold and hurt, for it helps me now to know what grand good fortune I have, and makes me feel that every step of my life has been shadowed by kindness.