Tomorrow we come to the solstice again, where the great wheel of the seasons pauses, for an instant, at top dead center. I went for a walk at sunset this evening. It was very still.
I’ll be sixty in the spring. How strange it is to be a line, in a circular world.
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Relative to me, Mal, you’ll be a spring chicken.
If it makes you feel any better, there are other lines out here parallel to you.
60 is a big year to celebrate here in Korea. There’s a party for your hwan-gap, i.e., your coming full circle (hwan = circle) because you’ve done five rounds of the twelve-year zodiac cycle. Your sifu, if he’s Chinese or Taiwanese, doubtless knows of similar traditions from the country of his heritage. In Korea, the hwan-gap is a huge event for family and a large circle of friends.
Anyway, please accept my advance birthday congratulations. Americans are likely to say “age is just a number,” but East Asians are more likely to say, “You’re 60, baby! Own it!”
Lance, it does. That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept at this blog for ten years now. Thanks.
And thanks to you, Kevin. Still a few months to go!
On another note: Kevin’s comment reminds me again of the curious prevalence, across so many ancient societies, of particular numbers in calendars and other organizing principles. Two, three, seven, ten, twelve, and sixty seem to come up again and again.
In the Chinese culture, eight is the number they’re preoccupied with, and interestingly, mostly because of a pun. It’s a near homonym for the Chinese word for wealth, or prosperity.
Kevin, I wish I had been in Korea when I turned 60 from the sounds of it. Any major reverence for he who turns 70?