I’m sitting here in the dark, the outside dark deciding it all. I have candles lit, a fire dancing flames. I have music, the Russians just now, such excellent rap in a language I cannot understand, a good backlight of rhythm and music, good spacing, good gaps. Count the beats. 8 to a bar. 7 is a challenge, key changes, ones which would have had my knuckles rapped in the olden days as a music student. Probably why I was expelled. I listen to my playlist in this warm darkness, this candle-lit surround, the quiet of the out there, supposedly. The division of walls thinks me. In here there is warming food, warm candles, warm fire, safety. Out there, it could ice up, blow a hooligan with a ridonculous name, trees could fall, anyone could.

We make up stories for our lives, who we think we are. As contexts change, as they always do, we fight to find ourselves, tripping over new fashion, dire straights, unexpected turmoil and then another blast blows in with ice teeth and closed arms. It’s exhausting, this whole living thing. However, it seems to me that the young have it. They aren’t peppered with the tracer bullets of my generation and perhaps the one below me. They are fresh and excited, confident and moving on in directions I certainly never knew as options. I like that. I hear them out with pals, celebrating, their love of study, see pics of their peer group, hear their determined hope for our future.

I feel fine about all of that.