An Existential Speed Bump

You know, I suspect most people simply couldn't begin to comprehend what kind of a burden it is to be a sensitive genius. At times it can be sheer agony.

There, I knew that would get your attention! Those of you who follow this blog on US soil have just snorted coffee out your nose. People reading it in other international time zones are shaking your heads and thinking, "This chick is straight trippin'." But people who know me really well understand where I'm coming from. You know how utterly sarcastic I am about 90 percent of the time, but that underneath that sarcasm there's a kernel of unblinking self-scrutiny.

All this is to explain why I have not been creatively inclined of late, for a lot of reasons. First, as I wrote in a recent posting, this Summmer of High Profile Mortality has sapped some of my generally upbeat energy. This particular spiral began with late June's Michael/Farrah double date with the Grim Reaper, but my friend Karen's death on July 6th really packed a wallop. Come to think of it, I'm still struggling with it, even though we weren't close when she passed. Like I've said before, 47 year old women shouldn't die, not just when we're finally figuring this life thing out.

Last week, I explained what Ted Kennedy's passing meant, and then I learned that the

woman who wrote "Going to the Chapel" and "River Deep, Mountain High" died. At that moment, I felt like shouting, "Stop the World...I Wanna Get Off!" You know how little things can some time hit you the hardest? Not to say that Ellie Greenwich's death was "little" to the people who loved her, mind you. It's just that I was surprised by how sad it made me feel.

But now I think I understand what's going on. I figured it out last Friday, while sitting in a taxi watching a toddler wearing a tiger suit playing near the park bench where his mother was sitting. The child was so adorable, I considered whether a prison stretch for kidnapping would be worth the risk, if it meant I could hang out with him for a while. My 25 year old brain's first impulse was,

"Why don't you just go ahead and get pregnant and have one of your own? You don't even have to get married, or even like the guy. Hell, you don't even have to meet the guy, for that matter. There's still time......."

But then my almost 48 year old ovaries chimed in to remind me that, "It would require the expertise of Dr. Frankenstein and an epic thunderstorm to create the electrical surge powerful enough to initiate life in your overheated oven, Ms. Jones."

I know, I'm rambling here. I guess what I'm trying to say is that lately, I've been confronting the possibility that 2/3rds of my life may be fork-worthy. DONE, people. That sounds a lot less upbeat than considering the glass half full, or all the ways middle aged people convince themselves that "Life Begins at 50," and "The Best is Yet to Come," and all that other psychobable stuff.

"It's like memories of a time when you danced around with a towel tied to your head while Jackson Five albums were blaring, and you could run like the wind, and 30 seemed "old," and the future seemed endless, are disappearing, inch by inch, relentlessly....."

Don't worry---I know this is just an existential speed bump. In fact, I'm convinced that one good roll in the hay would probably erase this mindset completely. But until such a fortuitous opportunity presents itself, a sensitive genius like me must endure the mental agonies that ensue when one accidentally backs into a mirror and notices that cellulite is NOT just something that happens to other people. That shit is harrowing, people.