HERE WE GO!

“I believe that since my life began, the most I’ve had is just a talent to amuse”

Noel Coward – If Love Were All

I am obsessed with my age. I always have been. When I was 16 and trying to sneak into the Biftek St. Laurent, I prayed to look older. When I was 19, I lied about my age (I said I was 24) in order to get a job as music director for Lady Be Good. When I turned 30, the mother of one of my high school students wished me Happy Birthday, and asked me old I was. I said it was the ‘big one’. She asked “40?” Flabbergasted, I corrected her, politely and with a nervous laugh.  She said that I looked great for 40. So I looked bad for 30?

Well, here I am, 9 years later, on the cusp of 40. Holy shit. I was 16 when my mother turned 40.  Could I really be the father of a 16 year-old child? (Forgetting the logistical improbability of me actually having sired an offspring, would I have been ready at 23 for fatherhood? Would I be ready now to deal with the particular hell it must be to raise a 16 year-old? Would he or she be trying to sneak into the Biftek?)

It is fact, not vanity, when I say that I don’t look my age. True, I am not the fresh-faced Young Turk who showed such promise. But let’s face it; Italian don’t crack either. I have an array of moisturizers and eye creams that conspire to preserve my unpreservable youth. I dress in age-inappropriate clothing (i.e.; Urban Outfitters) in order to create the illusion that I am much hipper than I am in reality. (What is age-appropriate clothing? Could Stacey and Clinton tell me? Should I start dressing from the Arnold Palmer Collection?) I tend to hang out with people at least 10 years my junior (this is often by circumstance, as people who work on ships tend to be younger than me).  And I will admit to some occasional light photoshopping of pictures before posting them on Facebook. Despite all this, I feel that I am ready to embrace turning 40. Fair enough, I may not be turning cartwheels, but I’ve earned my age – every bag under my eye (I have two!), every silver hair (I have a bunch!), every stretch mark (Boy, have I got those!). However, with age, supposedly, comes wisdom (stop laughing!), and I would like to think that as I careen toward middle age, I have (will have?) acquired a modicum of sagacity (Man, is that sentence full of 10-cent words or what?). I have been tremendously fortunate to have already lived a very eventful life, full of amazing experiences. I have also made my fair share of huge mistakes. There are things I’ve done of which I am not proud, and which still haunt me. But those incidences, perhaps more than anything else, have allowed me to understand who and what I am. I am a much different person than I was 10, even 5 years ago. I didn’t really like myself then. I’m now happy with and proud of the person I’ve become and am becoming.

But enough heavy shit. Why Blogged Arteries? (Cute title, huh?) Well, all forms of expression are by their very nature self-indulgent, and I am nothing if not self-indulgent. I thought it would be a good way for me to take stock of my life, to discover new and unexpected aspects of my personality, to re-examine the things that have helped shape me, and perhaps at the same time, entertain and amuse. I intend to keep the tone fairly light, as I am not necessarily easily given to baring my soul (the end of the previous paragraph not withstanding). But I think (hope) that within these pages, the why/when/who/what that is James Huram Higgins, born March 12^th 1971, will bleat out loud and clear.  Fill the fridge with beer and hide your sons, ‘cause 40, here I come!




pic 1 - My 6th birthday. Montréal, Québec.
pic 2 - My 37th birthday. San Juan, Puerto Rico.