Absence and forgetfulness ... two excuses for not having returned to this page in over two weeks. Perhaps they tie into something deeper, or maybe we could write them off as part and parcel of a heavy schedule and the kind of exhaustion which makes TV seem that much more meaningful at eleven pm.

Tomorrow, April 14th, is my 38th birthday. I had not really put much thought into it, given the first three words of this post, at least until last Thursday when a colleague and friend asked me about it, for reference sake. I knew it was coming; over time we project onto ourselves and most likely onto everyone around us the sort of emotional bond with aging that ignore when we're younger because, frankly, we have that option. Not that I am that old, either - the average age of most Associate Professors (in Britain we would be called "Senior Lecturers") is a bit higher, a fact not lost on me nor on my fellow "youngins," as our elder colleagues humorously refer to us.

It would be at this point that this exploration should really begin: the poetry of youth and aging can take us to that "something deeper" I had hinted at above. Some of my favorite bits of verse on the topic come from Gloria Fuertes and her "poemas infantiles":

«Para felicitar un cumpleãnos»

Esta mañana temprano
cantaban las codornices
y en su cántico decían:
¡que los cumplas muy felices!

Here the joy and innocence of youth as a function of nature's beauty and apparent simplicity come to bare. Yet this happy, almost mythical, quartet stands in ironic contrast to another short poetic treatise on the contradiction of death's approaching caress:

«Lamento En La Montaña»

Aún te veo, río de mi vida,
con los ojos que miran las montañas.

...

Soñé... te quedarías a mi lado,
como un lago sin cisnes,
para siempre,
acunando mi ansia.
Qué locura más loca
enamorarse de un río una montaña!

In these short excerpts, the poetic voice remakes the natural pantheon into a force of love and destruction, as it is the "río" (river) which both carves the valley from the "montaña" and receives the latter's "ansia" (longing). (I should note that this is one of those rare glimpses into a Spanish form of what the Portuguese call saudade, although without the sea's presence among other subtle differences, as would be found in the works of many Lusophone poets of Fuerte's generation). The dream in which the mountain rejoices from the river's presence utilizes a traditional vision of the river as the symbol of life moving ceaselessly toward death and reunion with all others who have died (from Jorge Manrique's "Nuestras vidas son los ríos / que van a dar en la mar / que es el morir") and turns it ironically in on itself, creating a beautiful new space in the process. This space, an empty one filled only with the loveliness brought about by the river's constant and minuscule engulfing of the mountain, makes one forget that its creative force also must destroy its matéria prima.

Where one life starts another must give to it; where one life ends another takes from it. One begets the next, as we move forward in the time and place granted us. Let us make something beautiful from it all.

So in absence and forgetting, as in lifting our heads toward the sky to enjoy the fresh Spring air and birdsong, I invite you to consider this ageless interlude, and I wish you good night / buenas noches / boa noite.