I wasn’t really aware that there are folks out there talking about the world coming to an end on Saturday. I guess I’m not on the doomsday distro list, which is just fine with me because if the world does decide to come to an end I think I’d like to be surprised. I don’t want to have a whole lot of time to sit around and think about the impending unavoidable end of everything. Let’s make it quick – surprise! – no time for regrets, or, I knew I should have seen Bridesmaids the night it came out because I really could have used a laugh what with all this the-end-is-nigh talk lingering in the air.
Make it quick. Like a band-aid. See you.
And then I saw this, a post on Craigslist where some chap from Ronkonkoma (is that even a real place?) is trying to get people to give him all their worldly possessions because hey, after Saturday, you won’t be around to use them! He’s obviously a terrible person and anyone willing to give him anything probably deserves to be blown away in a shattering cloud of flames straight out of Independence Day.
But that’s beside the point.
The point is I got to thinking about the things I have that are worth something to me that I’d be loathe to leave behind in the event of Armageddon. I guess it’s sort of like the question you ask during that fun game while drinking with friends: if your apartment were on fire, what would you take with you? Well this guy is asking for money, cars, canned food and durable goods, and while I’m not entirely sure what the latter is, I do know I don’t have very much, if anything, of the former (though I do think there is a can of pumpkin in the back of my cabinet from when I got it into my head a few Thanksgivings ago that I was going to bake a pie).
But that’s beside the point.
The point is I got to thinking about the things I have that are worth something to me that I’d be loathe to leave behind in the event of Armageddon. I guess it’s sort of like the question you ask during that fun game while drinking with friends: if your apartment were on fire, what would you take with you? Well this guy is asking for money, cars, canned food and durable goods, and while I’m not entirely sure what the latter is, I do know I don’t have very much, if anything, of the former (though I do think there is a can of pumpkin in the back of my cabinet from when I got it into my head a few Thanksgivings ago that I was going to bake a pie).
What I think I’d want to take, in no particular order, are the following: original LP of Dave Brubeck’s 1959 Time Out, a bathrobe, and a laptop.
The album. Well because it’s my all-time favorite jazz album that I spent a long time trying to find, but also because I talked my way into getting it free of charge from a frat boy at a party in college. While drinking Miller High Life out of a red plastic cup I came upon this gentleman’s extensive and amazing record collection (which happened to be his father’s, his son didn’t know Dave Brubeck from Dave Matthews). I began to tell him that it wasn’t really worth much and he would probably hate it if he ever did get around to listening to it, or, for that matter, purchasing a turntable to play it on. The kid had more resolve than I anticipated in the end, maybe the idea of his father getting angry really terrified him. Either way it left with me at the end of the night, and whenever I listen to the record I still find myself wondering how his dad reacted when he found out.
The bathrobe. It’s folded neatly in a plastic bin under my bed where it has been, largely untouched, for five years. It was the last thing I remember my mother wearing, and for a while after she died it still smelled like her. It doesn’t anymore, but sometimes if I put it on for just a moment it feels like she’s still close by. It’s as though this one piece of fabric has the magical power to transport me back to a time when there wasn’t a gaping hole in my left ventricle.
The laptop. I never got around to catching up with where things were in the technology arena, so every Mighty post from when I started the blog in 2006, (along with every college paper, and short story and word I’ve ever written), is saved on the hard drive of my 2004 Dell laptop. I figure there’s probably some pretty terrible things on there that ought to disappear forever in a blinding haze of blue screen of death, but it’s good, I think, to remember the crap you’ve produced to realize how far you’ve hopefully come.
Anyway all of this doesn’t matter of course, because the world isn’t in fact (spoiler alert!) ending. If it were what I would take with me wouldn’t really be an issue. It does however, remind me a bit about the things that really do matter that we so easily forget about and lose sight of in the daily course of our lives, when we never stop to think, hey, one day this is all going to end, isn’t it?
Because it’s not really about the objects at all, it’s about how they make us feel and their ability to remind us who we are. Maybe the real point (yeah dude in Ronkonkoma, I’m talking to you), is to try to embrace those feelings a bit more and work harder at living the kind of life so that if the world really were to fall into the Rapture (whatever that is), you’d at least know you lived not being afraid of experiencing the whole vast range of the emotional spectrum, (that’s the good to the exceptionally shitty), and maybe then the end of everything would sort of be…well, okay really.
So perhaps tomorrow I’ll slip on the bathrobe and listen to Time Out while transferring all my files to a newly purchased USB drive (one has to start somewhere I suppose). I’ll do it for posterity if nothing else, but also as a testament that I’m still here, for now anyway, so might as well at least start backing up my files.
I might even make that pie.
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