Portable Midlife

 

I am crippled in ways I don’t understand.

I am stronger in ways that it makes me mad.

I used to love deadlines. 

 

Not loving the elongated existential crisis either. 

 

I have lived in a make-believe for 25 years. 

I have the same friends - we made the “cut”. 

We actually talked about how we lifted like odd rice that floats on top of the water. 

We won’t be cooked with the rest. 

Broken, damaged, yes. 

We know the worst about one another and fucking stick together. 

Everyone else is going to be eaten.

We are harder to impress, and we have no time for bullshit.

My super bifocals can see only as far as the door. 

It is a bit strange out there. 

Non-binary dogs are running around with no balls on a leash- 

and I am reminded to address that dog as ‘them’.

Shocking but I can’t remember what the owner identifies as. 

Self-important - perhaps, in my self-conscious asshole opinion. 

 

I visited one of the Buddhist temples last week.

I was getting over dengue fever and had very little of anything left in me.

I asked the abbot if my aura seemed alright to his eyes of clear lakes and bright skies. 

Between the age of 50 and 60, he said, 

it is very common to pull a blank on everything.

It’s like being the star of a black and white movie 

that nobody is getting tickets for—

because there are none for sale. 

The plot is uncertain, the heroin’s superpower is invisibility 

while filling in those blanks with a ‘how the hell’ or a ‘why’. 

 

Well, okay then, it is what it is for the next couple of years.

 

Expecting the worst:

AI will do the thinking for everyone,

everyone will have the same appeal and interest.

One of those dams will break on the Nam Khaan. 

Tourism becomes a sneak biting its own tail, 

gradually 

swallowing 

itself. 

AI generated songs will make the charts. 

By the time I’m over the current crisis of my own, 

I get to be back in a technicolor world I might not even recognize. 

 

And this is the most positive I can get:

everything will turn out just fine, 

because while

‘change’ is now just a trending app, 

transformation is inevitable.

 

 

2024. October