Happy Birthday To Me

I was walking downtown yesterday and I saw an elderly homeless man missing most of a leg sitting on a sidewalk leaning against a brick building weeping while being showered with rose petals by a radiantly beautiful lily white young woman with long flowing auburn hair and a silky light blue dress dancing sensuously while singing about sunshine and love. I stopped about a block away, once I realized what I was seeing, and just watched. The man doubled over, sobbing, his shoulders heaving and his head shaking. Excruciating emotional suffering. The woman carefree, in love with life, sharing her joy in a completely self-absorbed manner, oblivious to the man's reception of her zeal.

But there was no reception. Two complete strangers living entirely different lives at the same moment who just happen to be expressing their inner selves within a foot or two of one another. It wouldn't seem quite so unusual to imagine the same two individuals occupying neighboring apartments just down the block doing the same thing (or capturing the spirit in a similar form) while alone in the privacy of their homes. But it was unusual to see such a public exhibition of self-absorbed oblivion while seemingly engaged with one another. Rose petal showers from beautiful strangers don't typically result in uncontrollable outbursts of despair, either.

But, maybe I'm wrong. So far in life, it's the only response to being showered with rose petals on a busy street that I've ever witnessed. Or heard about. Or read about. So, a first. Of sorts. To an extent, I'd like to see what happens with a larger sample. In other words, I'd like to ask beautiful young women around the world to travel to downtown Portland, dress in silky slinky dresses, and let rose petals snow on pedestrians of all stripes. Dance sensuously. Sing of sunshine and love. Your love of sunshine. The sunshine of your love. The love of your sunshine. Your sunshine of love.

Creating events, observing them, focusing on randomly selected details, and then measuring them in some capacity under as many variable circumstances with as many different subjects as possible. For the purpose of ... ?

That was generally what I was thinking as I watched this ... performance. I suppose it was a performance. But it also seemed very real, unplanned. Authentic. Even if absurd. Somehow it was also the most accurate representation of the totality of the potential of human relationships I'd ever encountered. In that one act, it told the story of human history. And the story of the future of humanity. An eternal return of myopia, self-absorption, disconnection, and misunderstanding. Could be sorrow or bliss, though. Or anything in between. Or anything beyond.

I was talking with a friend just a few hours ago, a guy I hadn't seen in a long time, but a good friend going back a decade. What was interesting was how each of us began talking with the present versions of our selves as if the other was a versions of a self past. I started to notice it at a certain point when a reference was made to something that took me back to a state of being and a type of thinking from several years ago. Like a flash of lightning. Explosions of images, of "scenes" of past experiences visible through my inner eye, out of context from their narratives of the time, rapidly interpreted through the narrative of now, and ... both the past and the present changed. My perception of the past and the present changed. I realized I was I.a at the moment but the possible self my friend began talking with (before her realized I was not the same person at all) might have been I.y or I.stgwk. How many versions of "me" have there been thus far in life? There was no predictable path evident because there was no particular path to take that was anything other than a different version of the same life. So, personal preference is really all there is. And it's unpredictable. The decision to commit to x, y, or z occurs each moment and, thus, each moment is a different "me."

What is becoming clearer to me as I type this, though, is that most of the transitions in my perception of self occur when the past meets the present and, through the consideration of each from the point of view of either, a new conception emerges that contains elements of both, some traits being dominant and some recessive, some likely to flower under certain conditions and most likely to remain dormant unless activated for some reason or another. A birth. A new life. A new self being born into the world.

In that sense, today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me! I may celebrate by showering a stranger with rose petals.