if 8 years pass in an echo chamber, does anybody hear?

in a moment of wondering, i typed in the address of this old blog, thinking that by now, with years of inactivity, it must have been gobbled up by the ether. but lo! here it is. i skimmed it, thinking of course, that i sound(ed) like a broken record. wondering who all the characters in these plays were, way back then. what friend? who did that? huh. interesting. 

i remember most of the moments i wrote about here. but what is also striking is the torrent of life that has passed between bouts of writing. the thrash and roll of every little thing that hasn't been spoken - that resides in fading and faltering memories, most of which i haven't bothered to record.

but this blog had its first foray into the world nearly twenty years ago now, which seems bizarre to me, and unlikely. how much has changed and how much the same? if every cell in a body is replaced every 7 years, then we are a whole new world almost three times over, and everything that is now is an echo of what came before. the burn of a long dead star in the night sky. 

i am tempted, as i clearly have always been, to make a crack about my absence, and fix this post into a moment - write as if i will keep on writing, as if someone is reading, as if this post is real, as if we are, as if permanence can be penned. 

but i won't (or i won't go on about it at any rate). what i have been thinking about lately is aging. i am 51, battling the vague symptoms of menopause, reading with amusement and relation the struggles of my peers, as this generation of women - my generation - is perhaps the first to get so successful as to feel their experience relevant and so actually writes about it. brain fog, bloating, insomnia, skin conditions. aging pretty much blows. and yet, as they say, the alternative is worse. 

i wrote maybe fifteen years ago about hitting up against the spectre of my potential and feeling like perhaps the time had passed to gestate into anything. yep. still applies. apparently, you can run down half a century and still be dogged by the thing in your brain that makes you feel like you haven't measured up. and god, i KNOW i haven't. i was supposed to be someone (cue laughter) but now what i am is a greying asian queerdo whose most important contribution to the world is a brilliantly flamboyant thirteen-year old.

sometimes i look in the mirror and have a conversation with the person looking back at me. this is enough, i say. is it, she says back to me, familiar eyes asking those ridiculously hard questions. it is, i say. it has to be. because this game is almost over. 

i mean, she agrees, i know. she has to. she's me. and i look at o - his young mind tracing out his future paths, figuring out how to be in the world, still holding on to my hand, but less now than before - and i know i've done good. he's a good kid. he will be a good citizen, which in true diasporic fashion, is nearly all i've ever hoped for. and i don't know if it's enough. but it's something. 

perhaps this last section of life will bring something new, some other way to face down that old phantom. but if it doesn't, then i think i'm okay with that. at least for today.