grab the cat and head for the hills

For one reason or another the last month or so has found one or both of us openly discussing the possibility of the end of humanity...and maybe the world. And often when something has been resting in the foreground of my mind, it seems to take on magnetic powers...but that's another blog for another day.

So last night Rob and I humored ourselves a good 10 minute conversation about what we would do if and when it all goes to hell in a hand basket.  We had started talking about how my best friends husband is convinced that the world will end this year (he is always kind enough to console us with his prediction that Rob and I will be able to enjoy the wedding and a brief period of married life before this happens, which, he thinks, would be weeks, not months--as if any of that would matter in the face of certain global demise). Rob had asked me if I thought Heith had psychic powers (what if I said yes?). I said I really didn't know, I guessed it was just a hunch. And Rob said, "Well if the world ends, I sure don't want to be here when it happens [insert my cynical chuckling] I'd rather be in the mountains." Then I said, "You mean you would actually want to survive the end of the world?!" to which he sort of snortily replied something along the lines of, "well I'd sure like to give it a shot!"

Rob isn't the only one who has expressed distaste of my occasional complete lack of enthusiasm for earthly life, even if it is all we get. Realizing that, I went along with the conversation and agreed that if we thought the world was ending we'd do our best to at least get as far as my family home in SC and then try to survive from there. So that's our plan. And it's not that I don't sincerely appreciate life or that I necessarily want to die, I just really really don't want to have to deal with crazy cannibalistic people as depicted in post apocalyptic stories like Cormac McCarthys The Road.

At the end of these conversations and brainstorms, I typically comfort my inner fears with the belief that surely our parents and grand parents and their parents and parents before them probably all had this same kind of conversation at one time or another. And this morning the universal weave gifted me with this, which appeared randomly* on one of the pages I peruse. It was written by a high school kid in the 1950s -- read this letter and more (including this one from Kurt Vonnegut -- may his blessed soul rest in peace somewhere nice) at Letters of Note

It's also worth mentioning that the young man writing this letter is named Nordahl....and isn't that an interesting name? Last night we watched the movie Another Earth, and the female character who wanted to go to Earth 2 was named Rhoda, which can be created using the letters in Nordahl, minus the n and l, of course. Anyway, it was another little thing that struck me fancy.

It's Friday, and I should be working my little fingers to the bone but I'm not -- I am simply too excited about leaving on a jet plane in two days to explore San Diego, California with my most favorite girl friend in the world, Lapo.



* randomness is something I do not believe in, along with the concept of meaningless coincidence

**I do, however, believe in unicorns, faeries and life on other planets