It’s been a long time since I’ve written much of anything. For a while now I’ve felt like I’m out of quality things to say. Five dollar words? Are those the expensive ones? I forget. But I’ve been thinking about a lot of things; who hasn’t these days?
When I can’t sleep, I think…were there no other life on the planet, and I knew this without a doubt to be true, would I still be afraid of the dark? It’s never been nothingness that scares me; it’s what might be hiding in it.
I’m sort of a realistic pessimist so of course I believe the end of the world will happen eventually, but I’m not an alarmist so of course I don’t believe it’s happening now. I’d probably deny it right up until the heat death of the universe. Come on people, don’t be so dramatic. Sparks rain down from the sky; has the apocalypse begun? Or is it just the 4th of July? What if the apocalypse began beautifully? With lights and color and music? Would we all stare in awe instead of running for our lives? Would we check the dates on our smart phone calendars, google to make sure it’s not some holiday? Decide it doesn’t matter; have viewing parties for the mushroom clouds as if that’s never gone badly before.
The uncles talk about pickup trucks and the little cousins’ glowsticks are fading as more stars come out. Smoke hangs in the yellow light of a sparking firework fountain; people carrying Styrofoam plates are black silhouettes against it. The air smells like sulfur and burgers; sweating potato salad. There are fireworks in the sky too, red white and blue and the lawn chairs press patterns into the backs of thighs left bare by short denim cutoffs. What could be wrong here? In Syria the bangs are bombs but here they’re pretty lights and if the end were ushered in like this, would we ever even know?
See? I told you it was nothing. I told you we’d all be fine. Until we all die.
Mass extinction.
It wouldn’t even be that bad, prehistorically. We’re only one species. It wouldn’t hold a candle to the Big Five. Maybe ours would be particularly remembered, like the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction—the one that killed the dinosaurs. History tends to remember the awesome and the violent; the creatures and events that take the raw materials of this experiment of life and gouge into them hard “I was here”. I was ugly or beautiful or powerful or great or evil it doesn’t matter but I was here and my claw marks are deep and that is what will survive it all; that’s what will survive the next Great Dying. Cause something will evolve again to see it.
If the sun doesn’t explode first.
But I’ve already said I’m not an alarmist. It’ll probably never happen again. I mean, we’re invincible, right?
There have been a few mass extinctions within me, though—of parts of myself, of hopes and even of fears—one I bet I could even call The Great Dying. I’m sure it was my lupus diagnosis in 2006. I’m sure that’s when it all imploded and I scraped on with just 4% of what I was before. It’s been ten years, this year. Sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? It feels like it too, except I still don’t know how to deal often times. If only I had millennia to adapt.
I don’t have that; I have about as much time as anybody else, as far as I know right now, which I’m grateful for. But for some time now I’ve had a few more kinks to work out than your average middle-class white girl.
But for the last couple years I’ve tried the stress method for adapting to life with chronic illnesses; that one where I just stress about things and get paralyzed and overwhelmed. And then I stress some more and don’t end up doing the things I really want to do. It’s so hard to scrape and claw beauty out of raw materials. What if it’s all just floating out there in some 5th dimension, waiting to be discovered? Predetermined? Finite, first come first served? What if, as I sit here tired and overwhelmed and paralyzed, I am missing them, the things I could have made—letting them slip through my fingers because my resolve didn’t come at the right time and just like that…my potential is gone? So I worry about lost productivity and creativity…and I people-please in the meantime.
It’s not working super well.
I’ve been told a lot of things recently, not all of them nice or helpful. But one thing I was recently told was to work on rediscovering who I am—and who I want to be—apart from some of the striving I’ve been doing towards things that I really don’t have much control over. I like that advice. It gives me a little bit of a foothold in shifting sands. They might never be still; there’s been a hurricane on Jupiter since who knows how long before 1644 and the universe is constantly expanding and not even the constellations are truly permanent; why should I expect predictability?
But to work on becoming more myself, for myself…that I can do. It’s a place to start; a place that isn’t “hurry up” or “be better”. Maybe that’s how growth happens—evolution, adaption—after disaster. Over time, trial and error, and eventually…just figuring out how to thrive.
I'd tell them, you know, if they wanted to know. I'd tell them all sorts of things.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
A Little Limbo
I’m alone in the country on this chilly morning. A good half-hour away from civilization, on the far end of gravel roads made slushy and by the rain. The ruts grab car-tires, beckoning them into the ditches on either side. Drive slow, hold the steering wheel steady and you’ll get here alright. The bottom half of your car will be the color of mud but you’ll get here. I did, from my apartment in the city last week.
I fled a fire, my cat and I. I ran from the apartment, clutching her to my chest. We ran through billows of stinging smoke and past the crackling heat of tall flames, out into the cold late morning. She cried and I trembled as we stood on the curb opposite the building, watching it burn. The flames were a reverse waterfall of gold and orange and red, flowing and roaring and snapping from ground to rooftop. I would have thought the smoke would be gray but it was a sickly yellow-white, pouring from every crack and seam in the building: roof, windows, vents. Firemen ran back and forth from their trucks, long strides in their heavy gear. Footsteps that should have been pounding were drowned out by the roar of the fire and the guttural hiss of fire hoses; the wailing of sirens. The firemen battered down the doors of the apartments that were burning and charged inside, knocking out windows and cracking the walls open. The force of the water from the hose knocked loose some smoldering siding. Beneath all these methods of destruction, the structure crumbled before my eyes. I stood shivering on the curb, praying the fire wouldn’t spread twenty feet to the right, across the breezeway to my apartment. But after fifteen minutes that felt more like hours, the fire was under control and slowly, slowly diminishing.
Eventually the smoke and flames were all gone, leaving a gaping hole that revealed the charred bones of the building. Dirty water and sooty extinguishing foam dripped from the ragged edges. A couple sat on the curb, crying in each other’s arms. They’d lost their home, their possessions, and their dog.
I’ve heard it said that fire cleanses but everything there just seemed a gritty, smoky mess.
But I woke up here this morning, clean country and fresh air, house empty except for five animals—two dogs and three cats. The presence of a third dog still lingers—I almost expect to see him stretched out behind the sofa when I walk past to get my tea—but I know he’s sleeping in the ground outside under my favorite tree. I know he can’t feel the cold, but all the same I hope he’s buried deep enough that the edge is taken off the chill. I can see his resting place from the window. He is not far away.
There’s debate about whether or not pets will be in heaven but I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t put it past the God who blessed us with them.
I know you’ll be there but there’s debate about whether we’ll share the same love we have now. I wish it would be the same but maybe it won’t be. Either way, I hope we don’t fly past each other in eternity.
I guess it makes sense that nothing lasts forever. I live in rhythms, not routines, and rhythms are subject to shifts and changes. One beat always in harmony with the last but by the end, it’s nothing like it was in the beginning. I feel a section ending, the hum between the fading of the last notes and the rising of the next.
I wonder what’s going to change and it’s a relief, really; I’ve marinated too long in myself. Pruning with my thoughts, being numbed by the temperature of my feelings. I’m ready for something new, even something small.
I’ve been displaced by smoke, and now I’m waiting for a spark.
.
.
.
I fled a fire, my cat and I. I ran from the apartment, clutching her to my chest. We ran through billows of stinging smoke and past the crackling heat of tall flames, out into the cold late morning. She cried and I trembled as we stood on the curb opposite the building, watching it burn. The flames were a reverse waterfall of gold and orange and red, flowing and roaring and snapping from ground to rooftop. I would have thought the smoke would be gray but it was a sickly yellow-white, pouring from every crack and seam in the building: roof, windows, vents. Firemen ran back and forth from their trucks, long strides in their heavy gear. Footsteps that should have been pounding were drowned out by the roar of the fire and the guttural hiss of fire hoses; the wailing of sirens. The firemen battered down the doors of the apartments that were burning and charged inside, knocking out windows and cracking the walls open. The force of the water from the hose knocked loose some smoldering siding. Beneath all these methods of destruction, the structure crumbled before my eyes. I stood shivering on the curb, praying the fire wouldn’t spread twenty feet to the right, across the breezeway to my apartment. But after fifteen minutes that felt more like hours, the fire was under control and slowly, slowly diminishing.
Eventually the smoke and flames were all gone, leaving a gaping hole that revealed the charred bones of the building. Dirty water and sooty extinguishing foam dripped from the ragged edges. A couple sat on the curb, crying in each other’s arms. They’d lost their home, their possessions, and their dog.
I’ve heard it said that fire cleanses but everything there just seemed a gritty, smoky mess.
But I woke up here this morning, clean country and fresh air, house empty except for five animals—two dogs and three cats. The presence of a third dog still lingers—I almost expect to see him stretched out behind the sofa when I walk past to get my tea—but I know he’s sleeping in the ground outside under my favorite tree. I know he can’t feel the cold, but all the same I hope he’s buried deep enough that the edge is taken off the chill. I can see his resting place from the window. He is not far away.
There’s debate about whether or not pets will be in heaven but I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t put it past the God who blessed us with them.
I know you’ll be there but there’s debate about whether we’ll share the same love we have now. I wish it would be the same but maybe it won’t be. Either way, I hope we don’t fly past each other in eternity.
I guess it makes sense that nothing lasts forever. I live in rhythms, not routines, and rhythms are subject to shifts and changes. One beat always in harmony with the last but by the end, it’s nothing like it was in the beginning. I feel a section ending, the hum between the fading of the last notes and the rising of the next.
I wonder what’s going to change and it’s a relief, really; I’ve marinated too long in myself. Pruning with my thoughts, being numbed by the temperature of my feelings. I’m ready for something new, even something small.
I’ve been displaced by smoke, and now I’m waiting for a spark.
.
.
.
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