There’s something so intimate and meaningful about a birthday cake being blown out with just a few other people around. 

It’s got all the good shit wrapped up at once: the shared love between people (the cake itself), the inexorable passage of time (birthday candles), our own little expression of individuality within the broader culture we live in (the whole ritual), alienation and loneliness (at the small group) . . .

I’ve got a story rolling around in my head about this. Length? Angle? I don’t know. But there’s something there.

Intimacy, tradition, and solitude intertwined in a simple act. Story potential