3 July 2002: Temporal Anchor Points

My birthday falls near the midpoint of the calendar year, the day before a national holiday. Some of my most favoritist people who don’t live around here are prone to visiting at this time of year, and this creates gatherings of the Pack. All of us who do live around here but often don’t get around to seeing one another for months at a time are coaxed out of our lairs and out of our regular orbits, and end up gathering together in unusual groupings, or in old groupings that haven’t happened in a while. We check in, catch up, reaffirm the Clasp. I think of it as the Quickening, though in actuality it usually involves relatively few beheadings these days.

The other time that this happens is New Year’s, at the opposite position in the calendar year. Each year of my life is to some extent defined and demarcated by those two temporal anchor points, the two Pack festival times, one at the turning of the calendar year, one in the middle, at the turning of my chronological age.