It's all about finding the right Mudpuddle for the right time. By that I mean there are so many different mes that it is quite the challenge to find the right me for right now. Why do I need to find the right me for right now? Well, my 40th is approaching like a steam train - out of control and hurtling along the tracks looking for the wrong sort of leaves. What I need to work out is what I want a forty (say it quietly) something Mudpuddlin Man to look like. Which Dave should it be?
I could stagger onwards as a more dessicated version of the Thirties model - but that Dave was far too introverted and took some bizarre decisions regarding hiding from the world and losing nearly a decade of adventure in the process, so really I am ruling out November 25 2011 and the days that follow it being business as usual. What then of Twenties Dave? What facets of that glorious decade can I carry into the halflife of my forties?
Of course, that all depends. In my early twenties I was like a newly born planet in some fledgling solar system - raging, hot, fiery, restless - every day was an eruption - it would begin with fire and end dowsed in alcohol fuelled forgetfulness. It was electric, life literally made the hairs stand up on my arm. Friends, lovers were all integral to the Proto-Dave - I surrounded myself with those that complimented the eruption - fire stokers and fire soothers both as important as each other.
Later, things settled a little. There was still fire, but it was contained. I had learned how to be. Life coalesced somewhat - routines of entertainment set in, comrades began to take on functional dimensions, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow began to have relevance. Life was less abstract and extended beyond the prism of today. Looking back, this is where I made the big mistake - as tomorrows take on relevance and you comfort yourself with familiarity, it is all too easy to let that overcome you - in other words, whilst the later twenties were about finding how to be me, the thirties were about getting stuck as me, and unable to take on the changes that took all those around me onto new vectors. Thus you end up screaming in an aging void. But, back in the twenties, life was sweet. I often wonder now if I'll ever love again the way I did in my twenties - so wholly, and rawly, and intensely? Much of me fondly hopes so, as terrifying as the troughs were to those magnificent peaks.
Such a quandry, which Dave to be. Of course, in truth I can be neither of those Daves, nor (thankfully) can I go on forever as Thirties Dave (Meta-Dave) - what is needed is a new paradigm, but why come to that conclusion without a wordy deliberation? I want the best of all my previous worlds in a brand new one - I want to rage like a new planet, love so deeply I can barely breathe and keep myself sane, whole and true. I want to fulfil all the promise that has come before in fits and starts as a complete picture. I want to grow up without growing up, the best of me has always been just that bit more childish than my age should allow.
I'm not going to go quietly into that good night, I'm coming back, baby. Watch yourselves.
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