Kurtz's Kittens Go Left Field

Am I too young to have a mid-life crisis? I guess the obvious answer would be if I’m going to die at 56 I’m not too young. What is a mid-life crisis anyway? Another one of those terms like democracy that people indiscriminately lump a whole lot of stuff into, that manifests itself in images of sporty red convertibles, an old mate with a too young mate, and obvious blindness and denial by the subject of what’s at hand. Other people will say, obviously a midlife crisis is __________. Then I’ll feel stupid for toiling over the definition and life, mid-crisis or not, will go on, though I still won’t feel I know any more than before. I was just playing around with my blog profile, voyeuristically clicking on my interests, etc., to see who shared interests with me. It’s addictive, really. I get to comparing and then constructing personalities and lives around these people. "Oh, look he’s a dragon and Aries and loves Kristin Hersh, too. We must be best friends." "Oh, she’s only 19 but also an Aries and loves elephants and The Odyssey. I wonder if the age difference would propose itself an obstacle to our future long-time friendship. Maybe some day we’ll meet in Chicago over a bowl of hangover chili at Earwax." It goes on. Many people who share an interest in the book category also share an interest (or several) in the movie category and in the music category, and also zodiacally. Making the whole lump of our identities seem arbitrary and manufactured. Pointless. For good measure, each of us veers off into another grouping in, say, the music category, but then that all dissolves into the same the same the same. "Who am I?" plagues me more than anything else—well, along with where am I and who the hell are all these people around me? I look in every mirror to try and see what I look like to other people, which, of course, is futile. Here and there I think I hear my voice like other people hear it and immediately become frozen with horror. The horror! The horror! Our little hearts of darkness infinitely tangle me. Sometimes I can get my feet out of this mud and just be. Not today. Things feel palpably fragile. A tiny flick of the forefinger, the molecules disperse and then re-group into something else. Knowing that none of these ideas are new also itches in me. May we all triumphantly factor polynomials over poppy tea and be happy like kittens.