Happy birthday Jennith!

My best friend is 30 today.




Thank you Jenn for understanding even the most obscure thoughts that run through my brain even if i don't bother to verbalize them. Your authenticity is refreshing and challenging still. I wish that we lived in the same province.

And since i have always been a better memorizer than writer, I'll share with you all (well, all 4 of you. whatever.) my favorite coming of age poem. It always reminded me of Jenn, and that heady "oh my god we can think!" part of growing up we were together for.

WHAT IT WAS -

It was not exactly the inequalities
of schoolboy against bullying teacher
or later the fear fitting into a
strange conformity at a boarding school
or how cruelly alien boys were
- for at the time I searched out chinks
of reality in the high walls around
me and found perilous escape in books with
night flights west and sky causeways -
Later still I tore the loose membrane from
a third ear sharpening steadily now
I could never account for
and listening -

It was never either exactly when things
fell into place with a plop audible
in ordinary ears - so that at least i knew
what others thought about the general purpose
of condoms and women
ham and eggs
religion and
the institution of marriage etcetera
and all of the adjustments began
of deciding whether i really agreed with them
plus the dark intangibles like death and why why -
And making decisions by not making them
and the failure personally often
and the shame sometimes the shame
and again the listening -

Of course other problems exist here now
the necessity for patterns and pattern-makers
deciding which are certainties and which variables
(and very few of the former and mostly latter)
and always making mistakes
and sometimes the brain and heart's failure
to know say
this is the moment you'll always remember
this is the wind-blown instant of time
that swings you into the future
oh heavy as the heavy cellar stones of the world
but hammering on the gates of the sun
or merely a little older and bewildered about things
you didn't understand that perhaps meant nothing
and fumbling to stay alive
and always the listening -


(Al Purdy.)