In a week from today I’ll become a 38 year old man. I’ll check into room 3801. On the 38th floor. The top floor. Only roof access above and the door to the stairwell is padlocked shut. This hotel, this hotel with no check-out policy. No need. Just a gym and a jacuzzi. And long hallways with geometrically-patterned taupe carpets and softly-lit wall sconces.
This would all be fine, it would be totally fine, for sure. Absolutely. If not for that damn premonition I had as a kid, that one night…or day…the details, I’ll admit, are super sketchy save for one tidbit, this one thing I have remembered and have carried forth in my head and in my heart every year since I was, I dunno, something like 10 or 12. The premonition was this: I won’t see 39. This is to be my final year on Earth.
For much of my adult life I’ve struggled with exactly how to cope with this most morbid of childhood premonitions, how much weight to give the foreseen approach of the end of the line. Last station. All must exit.
The horizon has a finite end and I’ve seen that I am near it. Shit.
My wife, predictably enough, has not been willing to entertain the idea that a boy child could have been bequeathed such data. God bless her positivity. Or sanity. Is that an oxymoron? The vagueness of it all makes it damn impossible for me to convince her that it’s true, that 38 is my finish line. Not that I want it to be true. Duh. But what if it is. What if I was told of my end 25+ years ago? I should probably crush this year, just to be safe. Got no time for regrets.
And so I run toward and from my future. I run to live longer, if I have any semblance of control over that or anything else. I dunno. I do not wish to die this year but I’m not certain I have a choice in the matter.
I turn 38 in 7 days time.
*All photos taken with the Samsung NX300 as part of the Imagelogger program.
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