epochal

the early part of our lives, the part defined by mandatory education, has always been separated into neat 3-5 year epochs. the first day of kindergarden. graduation from 5th grade. initiation into middle school. living and dying in high school. college, if you're lucky, and grad school, if you're brave. within this externally imposed structure you become accustomed to operating according to 4-year biorhythms. if you move about a lot as you're experiencing these regular upheavals, your sense of beginning and ending is even more urgent. i always get the itch to move on after too long, to begin things with a bang and run away before they have a chance to properly fade out. fleeing is comfortable.

but then after the education period you're thrown out into a world in which at least half of your life is still staring at you in an amorphous mass, unsectioned by anything or anyone. in fact, you're expected to choose something, and live it forever, and be complacent, and find your beginnings and endings staggering along at a pace that matches no one else's, their dramatic exigencies buried underneath a steady flow of time.

being at the juncture of these two periods, is difficult.

today's theme song is 'middle distance runner', by sea wolf. it thematically concerns tired bodies, longing, and gypsy magic, which, coincidentally, is also the theme of tonight's activities. you say kid a, i say chicken wire?