Obama 2012

www.barackobama.com

Today you can buy another cup of coffee—or give support for the only President to acknowledge that all Americans should have affordable health care, women should earn the same as men and have the right to make choices about their bodies, my "partner" and I can be in a legal union after eighteen years, etc etc etc...  It's only $3, but it's a karmic message that proclaims we do not tie our dogs to our roofs, we do not beat up people with long hair, we do not hide our millions to avoid paying taxes, we do not believe 47% of us are helpless users and we do not deregulate the systems that sustain our welfare as a populace to keep $20 in our pockets at the end of the year.

$3 is nothing, but it's also EVERYTHING.

Click here to donate $3 to the Obama campaign unless you truly believe this country should only exist for white wealthy heterosexual employed native non-disabled healthy English-speaking Christian men.

Forty is the New Forty

Michael Grant bathes in the Ganges in Rishikesh back in the past when he was only 39.

The stages of death—anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance—may also be used to chronicle the way I am experiencing the departure of my beloved thirties.  As I enter into an unknown decade, one that appears to be populated by greying rogue hairs, andropause, lowered metabolisms, higher cholesterols and the stirrings of future creaks and nasty tennis injuries,  I wonder:  Will my forties be marked by a rapid anatomical decline, or am I, perhaps, on the verge of my most empowered decade?  Will I, like Don Draper, master my craft and rule my dominion?  Will I value myself?  Will I make more money?  Will I make keener choices?  Do I still have more to learn?  Will I eat better?

The difference between ten and twenty was tremendous, but the difference between twenty and thirty seemed marginal. So why does thirty-to-forty feel like a larger leap than the other two combined? What is it about turning forty that instigates the mid-life crises where men dump their wives and buy sports cars and women dump their friends and start new careers?  Why all the madness and misery?  Why when we admit we actually feel okay about turning forty do our peers remark that we're 'handling it well'?  Out of a possible 300,000 words in the English language, the only one that accurate describes turning forty is FUCK.  Why?

Anger.  I don't want to turn forty, except that the alternative of not turning forty seems worse.  I feel like throwing shoes and throwing up.  When I make the bed today I'll undoubtedly smash my pillows a little more than is necessary for their plumping fluff.  Doors beware, you may be slammed.  I'm pissed that the illusion of time is so readily palpable and defining.  I'm vexed that there's no attractive alternative.  When I was growing up I had a friend with a tattoo on his foot that read 4/12/2012.  He claimed it was his expiration date and if he wasn't "something" by then he would throw a big party and kill himself.  I told him if he wasn't "something" then no one would know about his party and it would be a flop. I have to find him.  I have a compulsion to slap him today because of my anger because of this turning-forty thing.  I'm generally not like this.

Denial.  I FEEL nineteen.  Well, maybe twenty-three.  Okay, twenty-seven.  Certainly no more than thirty-one.   Or thirty-five.  I remember everything I experienced as a child, which was just a few clicks back on my mental calendar, so how can I possibly be forty?  My DAD is forty.  Well, he was.  Once.  A long time ago, yeah, yeah...  So turning forty may have happened to all of my friends and most of my family and even strangers at the supermarket, but that doesn't mean it has to happen to me.  People tell me forty is still young, but it was easier to believe when they were jealous I was thirty.  Now I'm harder to convince.  Who are these people, anyway?  Forty?  I deny this.  I was asked for my ID at the liquor store just last week.   I have the jawline of a teenager and the wonder of a toddler.  I can beat this.   Clearly they made that cake with all of those candles for someone else...

Bargaining.  If I can get to Hawaii before midnight I may be able to salvage just a few more hours in my thirties...

Depression.  This is how it goes.  One day you're practicing backflips in your backyard and thinking that people in college are really old and really smart, and then you're looking at your friends' kids who are about to enter college and you're wondering when the higher institutions started admitting children.  The student becomes the master, except I don't feel like I've mastered anything yet.  When I turned thirty I had rental properties and a store and a successful film festival and a nifty house and a reliable social community.  I had a savings account.  I had all of my grandparents. Now I'm turning forty and the house needs a lot of work, the social community has slimmed, and the rest is gone for good.  The yard is bare, the rains come, the grass grows and the flowers bloom, the bees hum and the butterfies frolic.  Then the grass gets cut, the tomatoes are picked, the sun sets early and the yard yields to the first crunchy frost.  Forty is an August mowing.  The cut.  The line.  (Sigh).

Acceptance. Okay, my life is good.  Really good.  Great, actually.  Follow this logic: if I didn't turn forty I wouldn't be able to celebrate eighteen beautiful years with my husband.  I've learned about loss, both in business and personally, and I've survived with new skills and instincts.  I've learned how to say NO to the things I don't want to do, or be (okay,  maybe I'm still working on that).   And I have new abilities: I can wake up earlier without being so bothered.  I can take time to read or play piano or walk the dog  without fretting about my other pressing responsibilities.  I can go into a grocery store and know how my food choices are going to affect me long-term.  I can spend money with some responsibility and I can make money doing jobs that don't compromise my values.  I pick better movies to watch.  I have gained the luxury of (a modicum of) hindsight.

And I still have goals.

If I'm forty then I'm closer to realizing my dreams than I was when I was twenty or thirty.
If I'm forty then I'm closer to gaining the wisdom of my grandparents.
If I'm forty then I'm closer to relating to my parents and their own experiences of life.
If I'm forty then my adventures will take on a new immediacy which will empower their enactment.
If I'm forty then my teachers were right and one day I did grow up.  Or at least on the surface.

I'm forty.  It's impossible, but it's true.  It's ridiculous, but it's fact.  It's astonishing and it's accurate.
Some might say it's an accomplishment.  Others say it's not a big deal and they are correct, too.
I'm forty and it's good to be forty.
People take you seriously when you're forty.
They may even believe what you write on your blog.

MG 

Hurricane Irene = One Nice Weekend

My dear friend Josh, his young dog Loki, his wonderful parents Tim & Lucia and their sage-like dog Chris were in Lavallette on the Jersey Shore this week.  They came up here to Saratoga Springs during a mandatory evacuation and arrived late on Friday night, looking a little exhausted and bewildered.  Josh had been relaxing at the beach and we went down there to join him for a visit last weekend.  I got tan and sandy.  His parents arrived in Lavallette shortly before the evacuation order following a 30+ hour drive from Denver.  Josh's sister Kate was scheduled to arrive that night in Newark on a flight that was cancelled, so she stayed in Denver and swam in a pool instead. 

We were all together and Saturday we slept in.  Later we had a nice long dog walk and Jon did an extraordinary amount of yard work while we all watched.  Breakfast was a delicious pile of local apple cider doughnuts and lunch was a far less creative reheating of random foods.  In the afternoon we went to the horse races for the last three events, including the Travers -- the biggest race of the year with tens of thousands of people and a $1M purse.  I lost $4.  That night we escaped the crowds of Saratoga and headed to nearby Glens Falls to eat in our favorite restaurant, Bistro Tallulah, owned and operated by New Orleans transplant culinary geniuses.  One more dog walk and then the misty rain started to fall, somewhere around 10pm...

Sunday was rougher.  We were out of doughnuts.  Then, around 10am the power disappeared, too.  The wind whipped around and we lamented that we'd forgotten to bring the lawn furniture pillows inside, and we watched helplessly as our patio shade-sails bellowed violently in wind.  They're tethered with steel wires to 4x4's planted in three feet of cement, but we thought a cable might snap, which could have decapitated a rose bush or the strawberry plants.  It was touch-and-go.  The rain was heavy at times, but not terribly abnormal.  If we didn't know it was a hurricane we would have thought it was a windy, rainy day in June that oddly had no lightning or thunderclaps to scare the dogs.  We walked our pets in the storm to the local CVS to buy candy and pretzels and returned 10# heavier with our newfound water-weight, despite wearing slickers and waterproof coats.  The dogs were also 10# heavier, but they were able to shake it off rather quickly, which also helped wash the front windows of the house.  

Without power or a racetrack to keep us occupied, we returned to the mid 1800's and read books.  I typically read before I sleep and I fell asleep after half a chapter.  I also played piano, but nothing recognizable. Jon ventured to the stores who kept their power by making deals with the government, no doubt.  His windshield wipers were adequate and he marveled at the number of expensive homes on the east side of town enjoying their working traffic lights and illuminated televisions, forcing a remonstrative call to the utilities indicating that the west side was clearly the target of blatant discrimination.  At some point during the day I won a round of Hearts, but only through my competitors' negligence.  

The rain misted and then stopped somewhere around 6:30pm.  We took the dogs to a local trail and were alarmed to find one downed tree branch, naked, alone, and now bait for three cooped-up dogs.  While we surveyed the damage,  Jon stayed home and labored over a glorious dinner, cooked in the twilight on gas burners.  He wore a spelunker's headlamp to see, which we all found amusing--except when he turned his head and blinded us.  I found and lit no less than two dozens candles around the house, starting with the important bathrooms.  I set the table with a black tablecloth (I think it was black) and white dishes.  I lit the final candle for an elegant evening when lo! Power was restored with the squeal of ten smoke alarms, three dogs and five people who visually assessed by our wild hair that no one had showered that day.

By 7pm the sky was nearly clear with a delicious, cool, arid breeze.  Another friend joined us and we dined on Chicken Fly Creek with Saratoga salt potatoes and collared greens followed by apple pie and ice cream.  Somehow we managed to consume six bottles of wine as well.  I'm pretty sure the dogs didn't contribute to our consumption, though I can't testify due to my incapacitation.

This morning our friends returned to Lavallette.  The little town near Seaside Heights was in the direct path of Hurricane Irene and it's just a six-block-wide strip of land between the ocean and an inland waterway.  Tim explained that if you dug a small hole in the yard, maybe one foot deep, you could see water in it rise and fall with the tides.  Their dining room is no more than two feet above normal sea levels.  After thoughtful consideration it was decided that either no damage or total ruination would be welcomed--the latter would provide a chance to fully and properly rebuild--but some damage would be the most damaging, because no one likes to walk around on wet carpets.  Not even wet dogs.

You can leave comments here wishing The Correll's your best wishes, but please do not send bottles of wine.

MG

Happy Birthday to Me

Once a year I’m plagued by the creeping persistence of Time.  I do my best to combat him.  I once tried to put him in a tiny box buried deep in the yard covered in dung, but he escaped and now I smell him coming...  Still, I do what I can.  I sleep regularly and often, attempt to eat properly, exercise persistently and I refrain from the obvious things that make people look prematurely old, like smoking, sunbathing and working in Alaskan canneries.  I moisturize.  While this is further proof I’m gay, it’s also a conduit to wondrous remarks like, “Really?  You’re 38? I would have thought 29!”  This puts a smile on my face until I realize that one day they might just as easily state, “Really?  You’re 68?  I would have thought 59!”  Still, it beats being 98 and looking 89.   Side note: Not having kids seems to help with all the aforementioned skills. If you have kids, feel free to keep them but know that they are the ones who make 39 look like 39.  Or 44. (gasp!) 

I love when other people have birthdays, not because of the inherent schadenfreude or the chance to eat cake, but because it gives me a moment to honor and celebrate the birth of the great beings I call my friends and loved ones.  It’s a good excuse for sending a Facie (facebook friend) a note letting her know I care, I’m excited she continues to exist and thrive, and with each passing year there’s hope we can one day reunite and drink a box of wine or spray paint a rival school’s pump house like the old days.  Birthdays are the spillway to reminiscences and introspection and in moderation, perhaps 1/365th of the time, this can be glorious. 

But, unfortunately, birthdays mark time and the marked time corresponds to my ever-increasing age.  This appears to be the evil lurking purpose.  I fully enjoy the beneficial attention that surrounds my birthday, but just like Ambien or Percocet I have great difficulty with the nefarious side effects.  Each birthday brings even more candles to delicious cakes I now fear may trigger adult-onset diabetes.  A higher age number means I have a lowered necessary heart rate to achieve “cardio level” on my treadmill,  and now I get higher BMI readings on my scale.  I have more frequent thoughts about the continued viability of my prostate and colon.  I have weaker ankles, greyer hairs (and in weirder places) and the inability to remember plot lines from last season’s television shows.  It's humbling.  Why can’t I keep the abs I had when I was 28?  Why can’t I keep the vision I had when I was 24?  Why can’t I keep the credit score I had when I was 20? 

Everyone wants birthdays but no one wants to consider the brutality of the aging process.   While I’ve truly loved every age I’ve ever been (except eleven—that was a rocky year) it’s still tough to consider that I’m on the cusp of the cusp of 40 which is practically 50 which is nearly 60 which is practically 110.  When my grandmother turned 80 we had a conversation and she confided that she still isn’t sure what she wants to be when she grows up.  She’s more-or-less ruled out ballerina.  That sucks.

While I would likely loathe a return to any prior age, I harbor an equal aversion to attaining the numeric constructs of my future ages.  Of course, sometimes I get scared I might not reach those ages, so I tacitly repeat to myself, on my birthday meditation at 12:36am every August 2nd, my ninth and tenth mantras:   मैं खुला रहा हूँ. मैं यहाँ हूँ  (I Am Open, I am Here).  Every year brings new possibilities, opportunities, vistas, vision and treasures.   And yes, every year also takes me closer to my driver’s license expiration date, but I’m prepared to overlook the petty negatives—on the first day. 

Today I am 39.  There, I said it.  I’m not sure I feel better for saying it, but considering the alternative, I shall remain quietly jubilant and thankful.  Now where's my fucking cake?

PS: A decided advantage to aging is more scratch-off lottery tickets in the envelope from thoughtful friends [hint, hint].