Saturn Return

I've been watching, shit, another sentence beginning with I've been watching, a lot of shows that deal with 30 year olds, like Sex and the City on the computer. Other than realizing how crappy the writing and characterization in that series is, I've kind of been observing that lifestyle and feeling 21 going on 30 in the magical way that you know it's safe since its not true. The same way I ask my dad "are you cheating" because I'm hoping it's not true. But I watch movies so I have to get the parallel advice from my parents about real, functioning relationships. 30 years old, in astrological jargon is the time of your Saturn Return. Saturn is a planet that deals in the harsh reality, so the years around this time are a reality check and usually difficult things happen. Basically, you've made your bed and now you consider whether you choose to lie in it. As you reflect on the things you did to get to this point, you grow up. This usually involves leaving or staying in relationships, reevaluating the way you deal with the people you know. It's a pretty scary time and often people you love die in it. Carrie and the rest of them have made their bed as single women and are considering whether to settle down, continue recycling relationships, as well as other dating problems. I've said it before, this and other stuff I've seen Sarah Jessica Parker in makes me cynical about relationships, particularly the fear of smooth sailing.
This idea seems to imply that we're babies at 21, or as a man I knew said "women are idiots until 26, men until 30." I read Joan Didion's essay, "Goodbye to All That," in which she talks about how she lived in New York for 8 years since she moved there in her early 20s and why she decided to leave. She calls it a city for the very young and the way she talks about appreciating so much more coming from Sacramento, California reminds me of the Midwest hipsters that move to Williamsburg. She can't imagine people from the East appreciating it as much as someone from far West bumblefuck who's never heard of it. I think she's wrong there, she's never met someone from Connecticut who would go there occasionally with parents whose idea of a New York outing meant getting up at 6:00, driving there at 9:00 for a museum, a theater production, dinner, and then leaving full of purpose. "Cultural" people like my parents. Or what it means when you can get up at 12:00, take a 15 minute van or 40 minute train that comes regularly and is at walking distance, and stay till fucking 6:00 in the morning the next day if you so desire. It is a city for the very young and the very not from there, I couldn't have said it better myself. When you're that close, you want to go every fucking weekend while you were far enough away before to come maybe once every month. I sympathize with a recently graduated senior I met on the last train to Fairfield who scored a job in an ad agency but still lives with her parents, except unlike her, I wouldn't have to be forced to come to happy hour.

Aanyway, she talked about how naive and happy she was, how she saw the world and New York as a new opportunity until at the ripe age of 28 every sight in New York began to seem the same to her.
Before Sunset, one of the most depressing movies to me, is a Saturn Return movie. It is our 30 year old selves looking back at our 23 year old selves and forecasting that the world full of opportunity is closed. Julie Delpy says that it makes her sad to think how much she believed in the possibility of romantic love on the night, she and Ethan Hawke review their past relationships and reflect how important a missed chance was and how their longterm lives turned out a mess. She slaps me, the viewer when she says, wake up, the world is a mess and doesn't even accept the possibility of good. It's weird to know that all the doors you think are open will close.

I hate how this mindset doesn't take 21 year olds seriously, yet my 23 year old friends comment that they feel old. What kind of Saturn Return is 21, when you're legally an adult? Me, I feel like I'm at the top of a downward rollercoaster, on the brink of sliding toward 30, when I'll feel like my days are numbered and start telling kids about how time flies.
Other than that, there's the open book of senior year. Even when a friend of mine that was a senior this year was drunk, she was telling me in the Malt House bathroom, "I don't know what I'm going to do with my life next year, I mean, I haven't heard from any of my grad schools, I don't have an apartment." I know everyone will be scared shitless. If they find a decent apartment and some job with hourly wage that has nothing to do with their background, they'll whine to me like my friend who sent out tons of job applications in the past two weeks that they miss college because they have so many responsibilities now.

I figure 21 is the age when you begin to make your bed. It's frightening because you may or may not find a (shitty) place to live with a roommate further away from Brooklyn, maybe in Astoria, maybe in Kensington or further, Brighton Beach. It will take you months to find a job even if you have a good GPA, likely in the storage section of a bookstore if you're lucky, with an hourly salary because the idea of getting $30,000 a year after your BA is a dream for someone with no major and "writing skills." As in research paper writing skills. Likely you're weekends will be spent with microwaveable burgers or going to free events around New York.

What makes the 21 year old so happy go lucky, so ready to travel to France with $500 and live in squatter settlements is like The Fool in the Tarot. You can choose to take the path of someone who goes with the flow and mysteriously ends up in foreign countries (teaching in South Korea, backpacking in Vietnam..) claiming to have no money. Most people do this throughout college and some in high school. Or you can pretend that this time doesn't present you with serious choices if you're like me and not quite done with being an undergraduate student. You can hope things will sort themselves out because you're a few years behind everyone else in development. The fool has their eyes to the skies and past some of the barriers that are actually in front of them, but I think the influence of the actually Saturnian age of 21 pulls you right down to graduate school or job, professor or editor, cupcake baker or cashier.