I feel compelled to speak. To write. Something brilliant and profound should come out any moment now. But it does not come. Today I turn 39—an age that doesn’t sound very profound at all. At least I’ll have greater cause and public support for a revolution next year. But this birthday comes, came, and will soon be … is gone. In this, it’s a reminder that revolutions are not turning the status quo on its ear but rather the cyclical nature of the universe as this one planet revolves around that one star. And knowing full well that there is no “this” and no “that,” I still have nostalgia for a here and a now. Yet I remain now and here: nowhere. Nostalgia for an I that can experience something deep and profound. Yet meaning eludes me, alludes to something tricky, concludes something without my input, excludes me altogether. On this, my birthday, I feel quite arbitrary and contingent. Ill-defined and infinitely pretentious. Superfluous. A spectre, a non-spectacle. Unseen, unmoving, and unfelt. Unreal. No, really, I’m happy to have a day all to myself (although shared with Lisa Marie and Pauly Shore), but it’s difficult to continue on with this life knowing full well that the babies were mixed up at birth and that someone somewhere else is most truly me and I sit here languishing in the life of a has-been, never-was-to-be. Smile. Wink. Nod. I’m god yet again … and good to go. H. b-day to me, bitch.