Fifty-One

In the Sixth Decade

A few days ago, I turned 51. Usually, on the day itself, I write a letter to myself and publish it. It’s a reflection on where I’ve arrived and the direction I intend to take — which is really just a continuation of the road I’m already traveling.

This time I couldn’t manage to publish it on the same day, and I’m writing it now. I don’t even know how long it’ll take me to finish it, or if I’ll finish it at all. If someone is reading this, it’s because it’s done, because I’ve published it. That seems obvious enough.

The older I get, the less interested I am in celebrating trips around the sun, so I don’t pay much attention to it. Come to think of it, the only observation worth making about the passage of time is how much it seems like a vortex that sucks everything in.

How fucking fast everything seems to move.

It’s not strange, and it’s an individual perception. At four years old, one year of life is a quarter of it; at 51, it’s 1/51st. Time does what time does and flows absolutely — it’s just me, just us, who perceive it differently. I used to think, “Well, it’s a month away, there’s time.” Now I think, “A month from now is tomorrow.” When you’re young, time is an infinite dimension because there seems to be so much of it, in quantities so abundant as to be…