A Long December
Today is December 1, which means November is finally over. November always gets to me.
There are multiple reasons for this. The time change and the early darkness. The arrival of winter, which we can no longer ignore as we pack away our shorts and pull out sweaters and flannel-lined pants. Thanksgiving, which being a family holiday is often emotionally stressful. If not exhausting.
Also, it’s my birthday. I hate my birthday.
I could say something about reaching middle age and symbolism and getting older, but the truth is that I’ve never been a big birthday fan.
I do keep thinking that what all these things have in common is a distinct before and after. This moment of transition. We have few markers in life about change and growth and accomplishment in our culture, as people have articulated for years. Both November is in so many ways about a change from one state of being to another.
Also on top of all the other seasonal things I mentioned, post-Halloween some people and stores go all in on Christmas. And if they haven’t started on the first of the month, then after Thanksgiving they do. Either way, the holiday season is here. Winter is here, if not properly and formally, then unofficially as we adjust to the cold weather as best we’re able.
November is one of those periods of transition, with a before and after.
One of the many things that Kurt Vonnegut will be remembered for, at least among some of us, is how much reverence he had for Armistice Day. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. When the guns went silent.
Today, of course, we celebrate Veterans Day on that date in the United States.
There are of course so many reasons for this beyond what Vonnegut said. The way that so many holidays become blander and more generic. The way that Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday ceased to become two holidays in February and instead we have a single Monday where the US marks “Presidents Day”.
Then there’s Labor Day and Memorial Day which are stripped of the meaning and intentions and instead become generic holidays. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is another day off where people remember a man who mysteriously died young and once gave a speech about how people should be judged by the content of their character – and that’s all. He never did or said anything else.
But in that sacredness with which Vonnegut held Armistice Day. Some of it is because it was originally tied to a moment, and what it meant for all of those who experienced it. That it was a holiday, an event, that honored and memorialized peace. Not war, not soldiers, not victory, but peace.
I keep thinking of his description of emerging to find the City of Dresden after the bombing. The eeriness of the ruined cityscape where he and others found themselves. Slaughterhouse-5 is of course a book that one can read as a science fiction tale, or one can read it as a story of a man with PTSD disassociating and unable to address the wounds that the war left.
There are problems with Slaughterhouse-5 that one finds rereading it as a 21st century adult. Really, just the inclusion of David Irving’s work. (Irving was a noted Holocaust denier, who famously sued Deborah Lipstadt for calling him that, which led to a lengthy lawsuit in British court that ruled that given his many writings and statements, it was perfectly reasonable to call him that). Irving’s work on the Dresden bombings has since been discredited. The numbers that Irving cited and which Vonnegut cited in the text of the book were in fact propaganda numbers from the Nazis which were circulated the day after the bombings and based on nothing. The firebombing of Dresden was brutal, as was the Allied firebombing of Tokyo. Though apologists who obsess over Dresden while “forgetting” the German bombings of London, the siege of Stalingrad, and other sustained attacks where the Germans sought to kill civilians in large numbers have little moral legs to stand on. Dresden itself had many legitimate military targets.
Of course the very fact that I have to defend such an attack makes me a little sick as a pacifist, but there we are. Me defending military attacks from Nazi apologists who pretend that Dresden had no military targets while pretending that killing British civilians didn’t happen. In truth given that Dresden was a rail and communication hub that connected Germany to points East, it’s a little surprising it wasn’t bombed earlier in the war, but that’s neither here nor there.
Before and after. The moments of transition.
One time to another, one state to another, one age to another.
In most ways, I do feel as young as I used to. I think that’s so common as to be cliche. But also, I’m aware that I’m getting older. That my hair is thinning and graying. That a twenty something who couldn’t remember my name referred to me as “The old guy. Not the really old guy. The one with the earring.”
I won’t lie. I was not sure what to make of that.
Of course I also saw someone recently for the first time in years and she remarked that I looked the same.
I suppose that’s life over 40. And that’s fine. Besides, if you spend your youth wanting to be older wanting to be an old soul, it’s hard to complain if people start actually treating you like you’re older.
The problem is that I wanted to do things, accomplish things, travel more. Do more. And I haven’t. Getting older is just a reminder of not living the life that I want. Not accomplishing what I’d hoped. Of course what is that but a choice. A decision. Two options. A before and after. To either change my life or accept my inability to change.
Of course, as Axl articulated. Nothing lasts forever. Even cold November rain...
Further Reading
The National Book Awards were handed out the other week. Two of the winners were people whose work I love deeply. Rabih Alameddine received the prize for fiction for his new novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), and Patricia Smith received the poetry prize for her collection, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems.
I’ve had the chance to interview both of them in the past about previous books.
Patricia Smith Wants You to Hear Every Gunshot: The Millions Interview
It’s About Joy: The Millions Interviews Rabih Alameddine
And while I'm talking about great books, I recently interviewed Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore for Electric Lit about her new novel Terry Dactyl, which I cannot recommend highly enough.