Poof

Last year, I turned twenty with a ritual. It was kind of weird so I'm not going to share the details. I turned twenty-one tonight with a much better one.

I spent my last half-hour as a minor collecting significant belongings and stacking them in a pile next to my computer chair. Lots of books. And Superbad. Kenneth Patchen, Kerouac, a book of career-oriented personality tests my mom had to coerce me into reading, the Chronicles of Narnia, even my copy of Diablo II. Then I composed a photo collage of friends and family, took it in to get a sense of story as the numbers rolled by. And roll they did.

Now I'm an adult. It feels weird that it feels good to write that. Not to sound over-sentimental (I, of course, never do), but it feels like a new kind of childhood. Square something-close-to-one.

I'm going to eat a bunch of my words and start practicing Chinese medicine and eating herbs and having fun with myself, because to me, being an adult mostly means having humility and a sense of humor. Why not? It's an adventure. Everything's an adventure.

Exponents

The day after tomorrow, I will be 21. Childhood is over. It's tempting to sublimate my alarm to thoughts of "21 is merely a socially constructed abstraction with little relevance to benchmarks of growth and maturity in your own life; only you get to decide when your childhood is over." But eventually, you have to concede to the rules.

One of my most vivid memories from elementary school was turning eight. At some point right before my birthday, I was at school (I remember the exact spot) and I thought to myself, "I will be twice as old as I was when I was four." That seemed astounding to me.

Now I'm throttling towards adulthood. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.