Renewed Subscription

October, guys! And my birthday weekend passed in a blur of cake and candles—candles on the cake, and candles for the darkness of a 9-hour power outage in SE Portland on the very eve of my birthday fete. It's okay to sit there in the dark drinking with your friends, though. Candle light licking the walls. Dogs lying around licking themselves. I see nothing wrong with any of it. When the lights did finally come on, it was like a gift! Don't take anything for granted ...

Anyhow, it's nice that your peeps come together to celebrate, but I tend to believe that a birthday doesn't really mean anything to anyone but you. There's a filing away of the past hours and days—documents rolled back into heavy mental drawers. Was there something you were supposed to have done by now? Did something vital fall away from your life? Did you grab something new, like a feather on the wind?

See, it's pretty private stuff—the unspoken renewal that comes with an anniversary of something like the day you were born.