Quelche Chose de Sucre

My precious pearl turns seven at the stroke of midnight! He's such a polite, loving, gifted child. It is a cause for celebration to have made it thus far without marring his beautiful spirit. I have hillbilly blood, so solar returns are marked with melancholy undertones. Where-oh-where are my six other children? By the time my great aunt Teet was my age she had birthed sixteen children. I wonder if the modern American birthday, with its array of loud distracting plastic and paper products covered in caustic, farty and morally reprehensible characters from blockbuster children's movies are just our way of mourning the lonely ova and sperm that pass through our reproductive systems like, strangers in the night, like ill-fated lovers.

Within this paradigm, wasted packaging seems to be equated with a joyful extravagance earned by merely surviving another year on the planet. Here, fanning the flames of greed is part of the initiation into our cultural pathology. "Go, Susie, go! You're not opening your goddamn gifts fast enough." "Tear it like you mean it, baby!" And kids are goaded to open all of their gifts before the guests go home, like it's a carnivorous military exercise. Lay Siege, little darlin'! Take charge! You the man! And we seem to foster this ravenous appetite for new plastic things pridefully. Passing down to a new generation a love of sweatshop goodies, the perpetuation of looking to the outside for gratification, satiation, and validation of the inner most self. Problem is the inner most self is unmoved by Jolly Ranchers and untouched by Savage laughter bubbling out of cola drunk mouths. The window of acceptable demonstrations of love and care opens and closes in the same time it takes to wash and dry a load of dirty laundry. A couple of fleeting Instantagramable moments, a pile of trash sky high, belly aches, and some toys that amuse for a few weeks are left in the wake.

Are these high-octane, junk-food-and-sugar fueled festivities punctuated by the destruction of wrapping paper and shiny gift bags, the result of clever marketing by the Gift Wrapping Industry, an initiation into brand identification and over-reliance of external stimuli to mask the vulnerable internal self, or it is merely a happy distraction from hunger to exponentially expand your brood and populate the planet with your DNA? Because after all, we are animals.

That said, birthday parties are fairly harmless. And, I think birthdays are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate people's lives. My own son's Star Trek(TM) birthday party was brought to a halt by a small guest list, and we've decided to reschedule when more folks are available. So, tomorrow will be low key.

I'm listening to Trois Couleurs: Rouge while I type up transcripts. And it occurs to me once again that, mon horloge biologique fait tic tac.