Time Slips

I do not like to discuss my age.  I like to let people perceive my age based on my actions.  This makes my age yo-yo in unusual ways based on the person I am with.  It also seems to eliminate a good deal of discrimination.

If people do not know one's age, they listen to opinions and give responsibility based on their assessment of one's ability to perform.  Once a person's age is known, I find that it clouds judgement.  I seem to be judged both too young and too old to do various tasks when my age is known.  When it is not, I seem to be given tasks, contracts, responsibility, respect, and friendship commensurate with my experience.  It just seems a lot more reasonable to be "timeless."

Age though, affects what people have experienced.  In order to be timeless, I have to strip details about my life that would define my age.  Having an older brother, growing up in rural Alaska, being a divorcee, and being something of a fuddy-duddy have all helped me appear older than I am.  Being energetic, enthusiastic, and without a fixed address have helped me seem younger.  Whichever aspect of my life someone wants to key into, they assign me an age that fits their model.

While I like many of the benefits of this, it has peculiar effects on how I see myself.  Today, for example, I went from something of a peer, to "whoa, you must be old."  I was not aiming for either role, but "old"?

The other day my graying beard was observed.  While I am not particularly thrilled to have gray hairs (which seem to prefer my right side), I am not particularly bummed about it either.  I am more bummed by my receding hairline, but, with a good stylist, I mostly forget about having "plenty of forehead."  I do not mind them, but when they betray where I am in life, I find a desire to escape them.

I continue to hide behind my timeless mask as much as possible, and while this does separate me from others, it also allows me to make friendships I have been the wrong age for.  Overall, not acknowledging an age, whether aging me or preserving my youth, has been positive.

Other masks, I resent.  Like age, I hate being judged for my personal life by others, particularly when it affects how I am treated.  In the IT Crowd, Moss has a website that tells him how to talk about sport with jocks (and enthusiasts).  I cannot begin to care enough about any sport to discuss it with people.  Maybe running, but only my personal experiences.  I cannot muster the energy to care how fast Olympians run.  This is mostly acceptable, because I wear being a nerd on my sleeve.

That said, I grow weary of even my nerd mask!  No, I do not like football, but I have also never been all that into Star Trek.  I think The Presidents of the United States of America said something like, "when you're a rock star, people expect you to hang out with rock stars," when they disbanded.  Oh, how I feel their pain.

When you're a geologist, geologists expect you to drink to excess.  When you're a vegan, people expect you to be insufferable. (How do you tell if someone is a vegan?  Don't worry, they'll tell you.)  When you work in the mining industry, people expect you to not be environmental.  At some point, we form our lives around fitting into, or defying, the expectations of others.

To fit these stereotypes (or defy them), I have developed a quiver of masks that I hide behind.  Behind them, I feel safe.  Safe, but often lonely.  Behind my masks, I avoid unwanted trouble and attention, and it makes the days pass with less trouble and attention.  Unfortunately, the days still pass.  A four month contract comes to a close.  A winter taken to reflect melts into spring.  My timelessness gets wrinkles, and one day, I will be old, and when that happens, who will it be?  Will I have grown comfortable in the harsh light of who I am, or will there be a mask there, worn from years of overuse?

Loving Nonexistence

An almost hipster friend of mine once wore a t-shirt that read something like, "I've heard of bands that haven't been formed yet."  Arcing along the lines of the first liar not having a chance, the message conveys a sense of urgency to discover.  What about discovery is so exciting, I cannot say, but when it comes to bands, often the personal discovery of a band comes too late.  I discovered The Civil Wars, then started hearing them in sound tracks, and on NPR.  Then, they broke up.  The first time a person hears the Beatles, the cloud of disappointment over loving something that no longer exists looms dark on their voyage.

The Weakerthans, though still together, seem to be only updating their Twitter feed, leaving not much to love in the present.  Their previous albums are time capsules that I find myself revisiting, and whenever "One Great City" comes on, I am reminded of discovering the band for the first time.  The song is an ode to a home town, an expression of love for a city that can only be shown through a proud disgust.  The people of Seattle, for love of the Emerald City, complain about the traffic.  The people of Winnipeg, apparently, each in their own muttered way, proclaim, "I hate Winnipeg."

Like an old friend whose flaws you know better than they do, you cannot help but hate the town you are from, or living in.  If ignorance is bliss, then love is spite for flaws that are too obvious to ignore.  We lust in ignorance, a pre-love that builds around something that could never have existed.  We love in full knowledge, but blind ourselves with an image of what it never was.  Either way we are trapped loving something that does not exist.

Music and home towns are easy examples.  Relationships, pregnancy, and child rearing seem to have the same effect.  The recently single find fantasies to justify love that never existed, and the new parent soon fools themselves into the glory, forgetting the pain, of days gone by.  At the heart, we love memories and fantasies because they are ours to control.

Travelling is much the same way.  When on holiday, it is convenient to think that the experience was in some way real.  That the traveler experienced the place, people, or culture.  In actuality though, knowing a culture means to be assimilated by it, and once that happens, we are blind to it.  Stories of gang violence and abject poverty seem unreal, but to the people in them, the alternative is just as unimaginable.  The traveler never experiences their destination, and they may stay for years, building a facade of pliable love that exists for something that never was.

The fantasy genre, and maybe fiction as a whole, exists for our love of things that do not exist.  When we fantasize about castles and dragons, we generally leave out the smell of chamber pots and open sewers.  During the years in Middle Earth that Tolkien describes, he skips over the messy details of life, Sam only once waxes on about the Shire, and Rosy Cotton.  George R. R. Martin is perhaps better at creating the grey area of life, but even when evil and good blend to an uncomfortable hospital beige we can freely love (and hate) that which does not exist.

Unlike my friend, I will probably never have heard of bands before they exist, and most of my hobbies are innately involved with following (e.g. following trails), and yet, I find at the close of every day a feeling a little like the title of The Weakerthans' second album, "Left and Leaving."  I have left a moment in time that I will love, or love to hate, in my memories, and the day is leaving me to love in dreams of things that will never be, leaving me the transition from what never was, to what never will be.