The Dangers of Following Other People’s Calendars

We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life.  Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.
-Jules Renard

On Dec 21st, the last morning of the world, I woke up on a floor mattress next to my co-worker’s mother-in-law in a small suburb north of Barcelona.

I’d planned to meet my mom and sister in Spain, but as I was flying standby, I thought it prudent to start out before they did so I didn’t end up stuck alone in JFK for the holidays.  Upon hearing I was Barcelona bound, one of the guys in the shop asked if I could take a Christmas present from his wife to her mother, who lives there…I had intended to couch surf until my family got there anyways…thus was formed an eloquent solution.

The last night of the world was uneventful, considering.  I showed up at Silvia’s house, and met her sister and nieces, who were also staying there, and the three of us (I’m an adult!) sat around the table and talked and laughed as the kids brought us a progressively weirder but ultimately awesome smorgasbord of culinary delight: popcorn, Doritos, champaign, plate with cubed cheese and carrots, some rice, avocado, tomatoes in oil, and a chocolate bar.  A respectable last meal if ever there was, and excellent company.

The next morning was grey.  I woke up and set out immediately for the hotel where I was meeting my family.  The room wasn’t yet ready, so I set up shop in a cafe down the street.  Typing, I looked up just in time to see mother and sister across the street, weighed down in luggage and looking very confused.  I called out to them, but immediately regretted it as my mother was wearing that which only reality tv stars are expected to wear in public: a bright teal velour jumpsuit.  Apparently my sister sanctioned this decision, and for the record, I find her equally culpable.

The rest of the day was mostly spent napping off jet lag- not exactly the End of Days I had in mind.  The last apocalypse was kind of a downer too.  In 1999, I was a junior in high school.  Like the most recent would-be apocalypse, I didn’t really buy into it, but I did at the very last minute manage to psyche myself out enough to throw a sleeping bag and a gallon of water into the trunk of my ’96 Bonneville.  Obviously, I had very little survival training.  I’d had big plans that night, but as usual, they’d gone terribly wrong.  At that age, I was somewhere in the middle of a righteous Southern Baptist phase (if you’re from the south, you’ve had one), so my plans definitely did not involve drinking anything or kissing anyone at midnight, but my friend “Marcy”’s did, and her soul was on the line.  My self-assigned objective for the evening was simple (barring the end of the world):  Get to the the tailgate pasture party where Marcy was, and make sure she got home alright.  Ok, maybe testify a little.  But mostly drive.

I set out before midnight struck as I wanted to be around other people for this historic event, but as the countdown drew closer I became lost on the backroads.  I got conflicting information from someone else that in fact the party was not happening in a field, but at someone’s house, and then varying accounts of whose house that might be.  Marcy was not answering her phone.  Commerce, as I’ve mentioned, is not a big place, but there are plenty of dirt roads to tie you up for a while if you become distraught while trying to save the immortal soul of a drunken loved one.  As it happened, I was alone in my car, scouring the radio for a station not playing Prince’s ‘Party Like it’s 1999’ and deep into the backroads when Y2K came to pass.  I think I might have pulled over to mark the occasion with a cookie.  Somewhere I’d picked up a giant ziplock bag of M&M cookies, and it was riding shotgun but slowly disappearing, as was my hope of finding Marcy that night…but that didn’t stop me from driving back and forth between possible party locations for hours.  In fact, I became so overcome with dispair that I managed to drive the wrong way down a well known one way street in the middle of town.  Not a great move after 1am on New Years Eve, and naturally, I was pulled over.

I’m sure that vigilant officer was expecting some drunken kid he could reprimand and perhaps incarcerate for the night.  I don’t know whether or not he was disappointed to find me- breath reeking of chocolate, crumbs on my face and down the front of my shirt, blathering through my tears about needing to find my friend to drive her home and save her from a life of sin, fumbling frantically for my drivers license, an abundance of “Jesus loves you” cards erupting from my Power Puff Girls wallet as I did so.  He cautioned me about the dangers of not paying attention to where I was driving, but he let me go.

I never did find Marcy that night, but on all counts, it was not the end of the world.  Nor was this latest global rumor.  I imagine our fascination with apocalypses simply boils down to a desire for control- not that we could control how it all ends, but that somehow, if we know when the end is, we can manage better in the meantime.  Unfortunately, control is relative and will evade you the harder you reach for it.  Why?  Because the moment you need control over a thing, you have lost control over yourself, savvy?  And control is not even control at all; it is fear as experienced by a self-reflexive piece of sentient meat.

Are we so afraid of the end that we need to hold it as close as possible?  Know it?  Mythologize, glorify, and tell our kids about it?  I’ve long hated the “live each day as your last!” adage because it encourages a highly unsustainable mindset from which many an idiotic act has sprung.  Here’s the truth:  you are probably not going to die tomorrow, there is just a really good chance of that not happening.  But you are going to die eventually, so at least try to keep it interesting and don’t be a dick.  Chances are, you’ve got a bit of living left to do, why not make your best attempt to deal with that instead of fretting about how much longer that living is.  Forget the end.  If there’s one truism I’ve been bombarded with repeatedly throughout the last year it is this:  You won’t know the end until you see it.