It's well over 20 years now: I was on the phone with a local hotel making reservations for The Team, and while idly chatting with the desk clerk we'd both arrived at a shared premonition: we were going to be dead by the age of ---. At different ages, we were both already different ages, she younger, but it would occur at the same time in time.
A year or two after, I was on a different coast, and in idle conversation with my host the premonition occurred again. He would be a few years older (as he already was) but it would be at the same calendar time as me and the hotel person.
Three people, different ages, two coasts, sharing this premonition that would coincide in time. For years since, I would wonder what it would be. Something nuclear? I watch all the world's events through this lens, and now domestic unravelings, too.
Were I ever to enter a contest for the best first line of a book, mine would be, "I am in training for the end of the world."
Tough to plan for! Do I blow my wad because there will be no tomorrow or do I save JUST IN CASE. If I quit my job I could afford to live until The End of Days, but what if they go on afterall?
A couple of years ago I did a print interview and the guy interviewing me ended up with a title based on the conversation. I realized, were some math applied, I could calculate my EXACT FINAL DAY: September 27, 2023.
If it's not nuclear, will I have a stroke tomorrow and linger in a coma for three years? How much more efficient will the next pandemic be?
I made a Death playlist, and I listen to it while in the gym, the place I've deemed most likely to incur a massive coronary, and on this playlist are two songs by Jason Molina under the name Songs: Ohia. Jason drank himself to death. If you listened to this stuff so would you.
Songs: Ohia was introduced to me by the gentleman who interviewed me. So not only has he inadvertently declared my final day, but he has since provided me its playlist. When I listen to The Body Burned Away, I think about the words I once had. Younger, less addled by alcohol and withdrawal and apathy. But it's true, now: I forgot all the words.
Sometimes I would come back and read earlier Little Bored Fauntleroy. I never deleted it because there are moments in it that are exactly right, for better, for worse, nonetheless. This is what is eternal. Once in a while along the way, in an imperfect language, there were the words, and I figured out how to put them together to make something eternally certain - where we ourselves rarely are, and anyway will not remain.
