Age.
It's featuring a lot in the forefront of my mind lately. Thinking about age tends to lead to thoughts about death, and vice-versa. From time to time I think that it's healthy to remind yourself that the meter's running. After all, what is there but death? It's what makes living all the more worthwhile - I suppose that would make a slogan.
Sometimes it is all too easy to allow yourself slip into character and forget that there's stage, forget that the curtains eventually come down and it's already eight forty-nine.
Two friends of mine recently found out they have cancer. One old friend, one new, both within spitting distance of 40 and, thankfully, both with as good a prognosis as you can probably get in the circumstances. I've come to learn that you don't get training on how to deal with this, what friend-some words to offer to toughen their resolve, to steel their nerve or just to show them hope.
But then you realise there are no 'right' words. Just words.
At the weekend I transferred a video tape containing old cine footage, taken by my grandfather in the 60's and 70's, onto my PC for editing and, ultimately, preservation on DVD and other less perishable, less mortal media.
And I find that every day since, I've been utterly drawn in by it, replaying scenes over and over and analysing in studious detail the too few precious scenes containing the father I lost on new years day this year, of my dear mother and several fascinating minutes of film showing me and my sister as babies and young children.
Looking back at the footage of myself I can clearly recognise my baby daughter Cameron in my own face as a baby. At certain angles, or when certain facial expressions flash past, as much as can I recognise my own face today in the eye-lines and expressions of my twenty-something father as he held and played with his baby son.
And so, the connection is made between images of ghosts from random moments in a time long since faded and the promise of the future memories yet to be created.
Four score years and ten. And now, approaching my thirty-fifth birthday next week, I find myself sitting at the centre of this generational equation, a biological pivot-point. Symmetry.
It's as if I'm standing I'm at the top of a mountain, able to see the valley behind me from where began my ascent, equally as well as the I can sense the distant promise of the valley ahead, and into which I'm about to descend.
It's a unique and beautiful viewpoint and I'd like to sit here for a while and enjoy the view if I may. But I know that soon I must continue on with my journey, and then I'll take my wife's and daughter's hands in mine and we'll walk off into our future.
I hope. That's all there is.
Hope.
It's featuring a lot in the forefront of my mind lately. Thinking about age tends to lead to thoughts about death, and vice-versa. From time to time I think that it's healthy to remind yourself that the meter's running. After all, what is there but death? It's what makes living all the more worthwhile - I suppose that would make a slogan.
Sometimes it is all too easy to allow yourself slip into character and forget that there's stage, forget that the curtains eventually come down and it's already eight forty-nine.
Two friends of mine recently found out they have cancer. One old friend, one new, both within spitting distance of 40 and, thankfully, both with as good a prognosis as you can probably get in the circumstances. I've come to learn that you don't get training on how to deal with this, what friend-some words to offer to toughen their resolve, to steel their nerve or just to show them hope.
But then you realise there are no 'right' words. Just words.
At the weekend I transferred a video tape containing old cine footage, taken by my grandfather in the 60's and 70's, onto my PC for editing and, ultimately, preservation on DVD and other less perishable, less mortal media.
And I find that every day since, I've been utterly drawn in by it, replaying scenes over and over and analysing in studious detail the too few precious scenes containing the father I lost on new years day this year, of my dear mother and several fascinating minutes of film showing me and my sister as babies and young children.
Looking back at the footage of myself I can clearly recognise my baby daughter Cameron in my own face as a baby. At certain angles, or when certain facial expressions flash past, as much as can I recognise my own face today in the eye-lines and expressions of my twenty-something father as he held and played with his baby son.
And so, the connection is made between images of ghosts from random moments in a time long since faded and the promise of the future memories yet to be created.
Four score years and ten. And now, approaching my thirty-fifth birthday next week, I find myself sitting at the centre of this generational equation, a biological pivot-point. Symmetry.
It's as if I'm standing I'm at the top of a mountain, able to see the valley behind me from where began my ascent, equally as well as the I can sense the distant promise of the valley ahead, and into which I'm about to descend.
It's a unique and beautiful viewpoint and I'd like to sit here for a while and enjoy the view if I may. But I know that soon I must continue on with my journey, and then I'll take my wife's and daughter's hands in mine and we'll walk off into our future.
I hope. That's all there is.
Hope.