The End of Everything.

Well if ever there were a night that a guy who writes a blog called ++inbetween++ should write a post -- it should be during that uber-liminal period of New Year's Eve.

We had some bang up plans with our dear friends -- but Jaelyn tested positive for Strep, so we gave her a Z-Pac and a double dose of nyquil and locked ourselves in to wait for each of our turns with the Great Red Throat Plague.

So, since we're locked in, and i'm lucky enough to be quarantined with my life-partner and a guaranteed midnight kiss, I'll reflect for a few moments on the End of Everything.

.

Over Christmas and then New Years I saw a bunch of folks that I don't get to see very often. I live for such reunions. I do. I feel a deep ongoing ache about how far I live from so many the people that I love.

The funny thing that started to happen over the break, though, was that I started to dread the question: So...what's been...going on...? That most mundane, bottom-of-the-party-banter-barrel-conversational-crutch came to be an weapon of terror whenever I heard its blunt surface come crashing down over my head.

(I'm taking great delight right now in picturing a giant metaphorical crutch, festooned with new years streamers and balloons and a bit of Christmas garland for good measure...)

What's been going on? Hmmm. Not much. Really.

I'd tally in my head and try to think: Well -- what's worth telling? It's all very...normal.

When I talked to Cousin-John at the Leindecker Christmas, I managed to put my tongue on it more adeptly:

"Everything right now is very normal, and I realize that to some people *normal* is good, but I think to everybody, after a while, *normal* is boring. Right? The thing is, I know I should be grateful because as soon as something disrupts the normality, I'll be wishing that things were normal again."

But then, as I thought about it, and spent some long, holed-up-together-for-three-days-intense-time with my family of origin, I had this creeping feeling of dread about the looming normalcy of my recent life. I started to feel like boring normalcy was oozing out of my pores. I stopped talking; everything I said bored me before I finished saying it.

It isn't the mundaneity of these days that I dislike. I've actually grown quite fond of all the rituals and rhythms that constitute my middle-age. It's the implication of the mundaneity. The mortality that lurks beneath mundaneity is the part that kills me. (Or will kill me, I guess.)

The big problem with feeling good about normalcy is the law of inertia. Things will stay this way unless we're trying to change them. And if we're happy with things -- ultimately we're surrendering to the-way-things-are. We become a part of the legitimating, real-making, river that shapes the-way-things-are flow for everybody else.

I didn't understand the first time I heard Death Cab for Cutie's song The Sound of Settling. If you haven't heard it (you should), it's light and peppy and everybody sings along at the chorus, "Ba-Baaaaa, This is the Sound of Settling! Ba-Baaa! Ba-Baaa!" Settling sounds so shiny and happy. And everybody knows that we shouldn't settle. I mean we don't settle when we're thinking about important things like a wife or a new car or what color we'll paint the living room. *Settling* is downright unamerican.

But ultimately, that's what settling does sound like. It's shiny and happy and upbeat. It's got a great tempo and its fun to sing along. EVERYbody wants to sing along....

.

Over the New Years Holidays I always flip back through my journals and blogs and daytimer calendars to try to see the shape of things. The bad news? I didn't find any shape yet for this year. The good news? I found a pretty interesting little story idea. I scrawled this in a beach journal:

two characters are elated that they have found a kind of profound connection with each other -- they think they have this great shared view of the world. This shared perception first emerged at a party where they had to shout most everything back and forth to each other over loud pop-punk music, and the shouts of all their friends. One of them said to the other:

"I think everything is an ending."

And the other looked aghast at the resonance. Shouted back over the blaring music and conversation.

"Exactly! That's what I've always been trying to say."

They meet for coffee later to organize a club, or a society or at least to write a manifesto together. It's not everyday that you bump into someone who shares such an unusual core assumption in their view of the world. Everything is an ending.

Only it turns out that they mean the opposite thing. One of them believes that every action is eulogistic -- that in its finality it pays tribute to the wealth of tradition and habit that its been built upon, but simultaneously brings that particular convergence of tradition and habit to a perfect state of decay. Every action clears the world of the memory of its own possibility. Everything is an ending.

The other person believes, conversely, that everything is shot through with a sense of its own finality and completeness. That actions do not actually create possibilities (like the first person foolishly and optimistically believed), but in fact infinitely limit the possibilities that remain. With each decision, all the rest of the decisions you will ever make are constricted, bounded and reduced. Everything is an ending.

They disband their club. But was the ending of their alliance one of possibility or one of predictability?

Yeah, I know. It needs a lot of work, but for an otherwise forgotten idea it was a provocative heuristic about the mundane and its relation to my own mortality. And to the End of all things.

.

With or without a Shape -- I'm so grateful for this year. All the newness that has emerged. All of the talk that sustained me. All of the art that helped heal me. All of the people who bore me forward.

But I'm also glad for the end. I'm glad that all of this is over and glad for the rich ferment afoot in the future. I'm glad that I can't predict at all who will love me best this year or how. What will move me most and why. What will capture my imagination and what will ensnare my desires. But I crave it all.

If the world is divided into two types of people: Starters and Finishers --(I used to say) -- then I am a Starter.

And I still am. I have become a starter who has started to love The End. But mostly, I love The End for the new start it offers.

Happy New Year~