I’m thirty today. It was bound to happen, though for some reason I didn’t expect it so soon. For most of my twenties I knew I’d be twentysomething forever. Then, about two years ago, I saw thirty in the distance — but the procession there was stately, adagio, hardly something to look forward to but a perfectly natural state of affairs. And then the dread set in, and things started accelerating. Months seemed compressed into days. My whole life began to hurtle at the cold brick wall of June 12; judgments, fears, recapitulations forced their way into my mind and my notebook; every moment and every fraction of a moment had to be adjudged worthy or unworthy, valued or wasted, because soon my youth would be over.