XLVI
This does not stand for X-tra Large Very Important. Rather, it's our friendly Roman Numeral indication for a number not widely used in crossword puzzles, número cuarenta-seis.
Kind of isolating, the number 46 - makes me wonder about all those other funky numbers and ages, like next years solid prime, La 47. Live for the now and don't contemplate that far ahead. I'm not much of a planner anyway, so 364 days off is just a ludicrous notion.
Changes so far? Things to contemplate? Given that Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah just passed, it only seems appropriate to settle in and take some sort of inventory of my life this past year: accomplishments, sins, failures, desires, and chocolate. The latter, I'm certain is worthy of its own self-reflective category, since it is a fave. Including Jujubes and Jujyfruits seems right, seeing as I spend oodles of time trying to nudge these from the recesses of my natural dental work in lieu of listening to a dear friend's divorce calamity, financial woes, or health scares. When my tongue is working that hard to chisel these syrupy nuggets from my teeth and gums, how could one expect me to donate 95% attention to another's tribulations. It's not much different than trying to maintain a conversation with someone who's "busy" surfing the internet for something, anything, anywhere more intriguing than this discussion.
Reflections on the year or what's new & different in the sub-semi-century age:
>Still searching for a job. Ugh.
>Writing more now that I have a p/t job. Discovering how much I enjoy this action when I've whittled away my free time.
>In combat with one, yes one, particular gray hair that resembles a RR crossing arm, including the shiny reflective paint, moreso than a blended-in brown hair. This one defies gravity and tends to point the way for lost tourists to head east or north, depending upon which direction I face; it's perpendicular to my spine.
>The gold nuggets I discovered in the Stanislaus River, making me an imaginary millionaire, have turned out to be a medley of pyrite & mica. Still pretty, shiny, and goldy, just not worth much. Fool.
>John F. Kennedy was assassinated at age 46, just one month & 22 days after I was born. Now that's freaky.
>I'm in a double-prime year. 45 was a good number, with lots of factors: 3,5, 9, 15. Seemed powerful: the year WW2 ended. 45th parallel is the 'halfway' point between the Equator and the N. Pole. My home state of Oregon lies on the 45th parallel, a state of which I'm quite proud and fond. 45 rpms were the standard record that we played on our little record player, when Capitol records' label was a meld of orange-yellow swoops, kind of like Yin-Yang, or interlocking Nike swooshes, only better. 45th wedding anniversary is the sapphire wedding (25: silver, 50: gold). Sapphire happens to be my birthstone too.
To make amends with this new age of 46, I'd like to point out that that solo crossing guard hair makes me just that much more unique. It's truly a glistening, follicled lightsaber by which my friends can locate me on a moonless night.
46 is the sum of the number of human chromosomes (23 pairs, in case you were a little foggy during that Biology class chapter on genetics). I'm the proud owner of all 46, no less, no more, despite what my siblings might occasionally say.
And, to mark the day on a positive note, I chewed a piece of slurpy Juicy Fruit gum, the very same (yellow pack) gum that my maternal grandmother honored each of the five of us with every time she visited, or on my birthday. Hers fell on September 5, so we oft shared a 9th month celebration. We grew old together: the wise chain smoker carved from tenacity, "Old Kentucky Blood," and 5pm High Balls and me the youthful, tomboy, baseball-loving, pyro-sprite.
Juicy Fruit still has that burn-the-back-of-your-throat spicy sugary sensation, not unlike Beeman's, or Clove, or BlackJack, without the red or black tongue after effect. It's just enough to make the silver fillings in my teeth erode just a smidge, yet antagonizes my salivary glands to the point my jowls are flooded and I slaver over my lips like a broken levee. It's a stick gum with a jagged, Charlie Brown embossed print on each end. It's still wrapped in that serrated edge metallic wrapper, such that a tiny speck of said paper (invisibly glued to the stick) still has the capacity to fire off an electrical jolt through my brain when my fillings make contact. There's no way to get that particle out of the dental canal without a mirror, a good toothbrush, and a rinse. Or, when such amenities aren't available, withdraw that syrupy wad of ABC Juicy Fruit and utilize it's under-desk sticky factor to suction it away.
Toss that wad, btw. It's an electrical hazard now. Fold another piece across those central incisors and start fresh, like a new age, or a brighter outlook.
Despite it all, it's a happy gum, written in joyful black print with a slim, vaguely present red outline that borders each letter. With an oral and aromatic wave of secret-spiced gummy lusciousness Who wouldn't want to etch away their tooth enamel?
Given the Juicy Fruit, the birthday brunch and dinner with my family and pals, and the crisp, clean, gently-warm air and azure sky that marks the skin-tingling Autumnal kickoff, I admit this celebration of my birth day has been darned good. So long ole 45! Forty-six?! Here I come!
XLVI:
Xenogenesis, Lucky, Verve, and Iridescence
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