The End of The World

Now I can't imagine it's ever ideal to begin ones narrative with a title like ours, one that can only lead readers to the most obvious of conclusions: my Barbie pink high heels have been kidnapped. Stolen. Held hostage for ransom. Missing in action. Now perhaps it even invokes an illustration - me and my closest shoes, gathered around a small grave, heels held low in respect, for the tomb of the missing totally adorable shoe. But, no, alas, they are safely tucked in my closet at time of print.

Let's take a look. Yep, yep, there they are. Safe and sound.

So then with a title like ours, what is left? See overserved and forced to drink peach bellinis (forced I tell you!), an invitation to teach a creative writing class on literary construction of your "own planet" to a group of elementary school kids, and being made to watch movies like 2012 and History Channel documentaries on (insert our title here) by my boyfriend who clearly is not aware of my aptitude to be horrified by these things for days, and you have me, thinking about (insert our title here again), a lot.

I have always asked many questions. Why? But why? But then why? The reason I was single so long? Now so very obvious.
My father in order to put the final punctuation in my questions, said, "I think they just did that to make you ask questions, Rebecca."

That worked for a time - like most cork stoppers, but then air seeped in destroying the wine. As a (near) (alleged) grown-up I can't imagine the world functions on scientific principles doing things in strict order for purposes of making one Rebecca Simone Wareham ask questions.

Bluff I call on you Papa Wareham.

I don't blame him entirely. I was quite wordy, even then, and how was he supposed to enjoy his classic rock and the fine Los Angeles weather what with my blabbering in the backseat, and sometimes the front, and on the lawn, and in the rocking chair, and in my bed, and kitchen table. The man should have been able to eat in peace. But no, I had questions.

As a (near) (alleged) grown up, I give the internet most of my questions, and become satisfied with whatever lies it dishes and diseminates. And while the internet is valuable in this way, when it comes to people, well I never once did or do or will trust someone with a lot of answers.

See when you ask enough questions, you're bound to, by the simple laws of physics and nature and Jeopardy, get yourself an answer, even sometimes in the form of a question. So the end of the world at hand, seems a question, that lately, if you count Nostradomus as lately, so many have the answer.

Like so much of what I've described, and how I've lived, thinking about the end of the world - California cutting off at the San Andreas and floating in to the Pacific ocean, plates being shifted playing Twister with continents, hot spots getting damn cold, all of it ending December two years and change from now - well it just becomes two thousand and twelve questions. Questions that really have more to do with living, then ending. I wonder how people will live differently knowing as some do with many answers, that the world is ending. Would people not have that additional child to add to their family? Not move? Not start a business or invest or learn a new skill. Would life end before the end? Or would it, in cliche induced frenzy, start?

One car ride home from dinner, my boyfriend asked me what I'd do if the world ended.

"I don't care," I said.

I don't care I said, in my best twelve year old tween-ness bratty voice and tone and face. I don't care. But I don't I explained. I have control over so little. I am, at my most basic, a human, with responsibility to do my best, and a lot of trust in God seeing me through. If this is it, cool.

Cool.

But it clearly wasn't over then - because I didn't stop thinking about it. I've had dreams. And when my grandma brought up the 2016 Rio Summer Games, I did my best "eh I don't know those are happening for sure." It clearly has made me unnerved. And not in a way that makes me question my tween response. Only in a way that the questions, only build. Only in a way that can possibly be done, to make Rebecca Simone Wareham, of Valley Village, California - ask more questions.

Pride

I often travelled the 405 "towards Santa Ana," for no larger reason than I was going south, and the sign indicated I was heading in the direction of SA. Once one would get to Santa Ana, the signs swap to "towards San Diego." On the way home you repeat the same in some reverse pattern. "Towards Santa Ana." "Towards Los Angeles." "Towards Sacramento." Such in this way. It wasn't until I found a pretty awesome man, dated this awesome man, and met his family - that I found a reason to go "towards Santa Ana" for the purpose of going to Santa Ana.

There's a lot of things I like about Santa Ana, and only one of them has to do with the Long John Silver's. I enjoy his family and I'm pretty lucky they include me in a lot. The pressure to support the Dodgers with intense Angels pride, bears strong on my soul, but it tests my fan hood and Angels fans are sort of endearing to me.

Had I not found said awesome man, and such explained to you enjoyable family, (and a nearby Long John's Silver), I'd never a cause for exiting the 405 or giving the 22 a whirl. And because of such an occasion, in Santa Ana, across from a freeway, in an unassuming strip mall, I found the first "Moose Museum" I've ever seen. And believe me I've looked.

The next portion of this story is going to read a lot like a movie critic who didn't get an invite to the premiere - or a movie studios feared would tank never letting it be reviewed prior to opening day. In sum, I've never been. See I've always been on my way to something - dinner, lunch, for some grander purpose, and explaining I was two hours later because I've been wandering around a moose museum doesn't seem like proper acceptable sort of rationale, that while I'm endeared to them, they would become in anyway anymore endeared to me. So I like to pass by, seeing it through my drivers side window, and in my best three year old girls whine I want to go.

I've driven by it now five times. Or could is be half a dozen? Irrelevant perhaps that is to the effect it has on me at each passing. Like counting sheep to usher in sleep, or like my friend did once to bring her back from a bad pot-brownie trip, I like to start counting things.

Brunette actresses with names starting with S
Ethan Hawk movies
The number of obstacles set up by Kevin in Home Alone
All the baseball movies I can think of
European countries alphabetically backwards
Animal nouns with identical singular and plural - deer sheep bison salmon trout fish swine.

Moose.

It's uninteresting to anyone that isn't me, I will profess in all honesty, but I do it. And the same three year old whine that wants to go to the moose museum, thinks it's cute to call them mooses and fishes and sheeps. Again, un-hilarious, to anyone that isn't me.

I'm an LA girl with two housecats and as much beastly knowledge as I get from watching Animal Planet, fraternizing with PETA workers in front of KFC, and visiting the zoo. I know about as much about moose as I do Ethan Hawk movies as I know about lion. Which isn't enough to have an opinion about, let alone write about, let alone create something meaningful to say. But I like to look things up and have been reading up as of late about lions. And lions are much cuter than moose, so let's talk about them.

The regular plural of lion is still lion, but when organized in communities, the lion becomes a pride. Prides or nomads, depending on the amount of lion in the group and the sex. Many times when the adolescent male lion is outcasted at reaching certain age, it joins a nomad. But traditionally, when discussing the lion in groups of more than singularity, pride is how it is referred.

If you leave out the violent, and the searching for food, and most of what's on Discovery Channel, I find the lion to be beautiful, regal, strong. One with nature and caring of each other and their young. (Cuddly, if only in my own head). The name pride to describe a group of them sounds appropriate.

Last night, with a slit of moonlight through my vertical blinds, and the comfort of reaching bed after a long day, I started counting and thinking of this word which comes to me at times, now more often than it ever did before, more than discussing lion, more often than simply to reach sleep at days end - pride.

I cannot define pride in any grander way than you can find it under the P's and before you get to Q in the dictionary. Instead I tell you only what it means to me.

In youth, pride to me was arrogance.
In teenage years, pride was know-it-all-ness.
In early adulthood, pride was independence.
And in my life now, it means none of those things.

You could, for all practical purposes, move pride from after P and before Q, to B or L for what it's worth - because it's radiating definition in my reality has shifted so dramatically off its axis, it's rotated itself around the sun. In the me of the now, pride feels a lot more like humanizing. And the closer I come to shattering pride, the closer I come to the common human condition: needing help and not feeling pity for asking for it. Doing as much as I can, and then accepting of help, knowing that my selfness is rooted strongly, in the belly of something that is radiating, expanding, nomadically changing, as to loose interest in maintaining a youthful clinging to any need in pride. It stings at times, more often than not to remind that growing pains means humanity, and fear does guard it, masking it, but as the lion is the strength of the wild, and moose dominate that strip mall, to lose pride, is only to gain in what I've always wanted.

To be.

I, Resolve

I do the anti-climactic, the ultra-cliche, and on New Years tell you I'm grateful.

And I resolve.

It was the last day of the year. I ran home, to tornado through, grabbing three things I'd methodically prepared to take, and whirl out. I had got as far as half down the drive, when God, a force, an energy, a storm chaser - stopped me in my spinful tracks. A flat tire.

I imagine as tornados rip through Oklahoma fields ripping up corn and berries and spreading dust over it's remains, building steam and stopping for none, they aren't subject to flats. It's as if my force, my God, said you call yourself what you want. Build yourself up, tear yourself down, but tornado you are not. Whirlwind you are not. Destroyer you are not. Faster than the wind. That you are not. You are human. You are frail. You are candid and see through as a lace blouse. I see you. I see you for who you are: someone in need of guidance. In need of direction. In need of a protector.

It was a friend who, in 2006, let me in on a little known secret I share: there is no good news, no bad news, no news, that is better or worse than any other news. It's all life. Not to be judged or prioritized in terms of importance. Getting a job, losing a job. Finding love, losing love. A new pair of underwear, a sassy pair of boots. A trip around the world, a romp to the grocery store.

It's all stuff.

Life.

That when viewed through goggles of non-judging, allows one to meet it, handle it, learn from it, move on from it. It injects emotion, and then lets one not be tortured by it. It's a lot about just being and is-ing and floating-like on the salt filled Dead Sea of life's tornadoes.

Be-ing and is-ing has been the lesson of 2009. Even if in to the wee-hours of the last day of it's year I fight it, it's still the lesson it set to teach. And on the first day of 2010 I close my notebook, power off my laptop, and accept it.

I tore home that last day of the year. Got half way down the drive. And a flat tire pulled the air out of that tornado, too. It was the middle of the night. I was alone. I had somewhere I had to be. And I had no way of getting there. It was raining, to boot.

In any story worth telling, there is always rain.

I woed to myself. Why me - in my Nancy Kerrigan whine. I had tried to be a good person, why me, God? Why me?

I got inside, shelter from the misting rain and called he who has my heart.

"I'll be right over. You know when I was younger I worked changing tires."

Well, well, well.

He picked me up, changed out my tire, in the next 24 hours, brought it in for patching, done by my favorite mechanic free of charge, and replaced.

Woe is me replaced with woo-hoo is me.

2009 brought unemployment, finally a once wonderful job turned terrible job I loathed, more unemployment, sadness, and at times jubilee. A wedding, a trip, a big birthday, and the birth of new favorite babies.

Sadness. Jubilee. At times stretching so thin as to make me feel invisible.

I don't know a lot. But I know when I listen to that friend's advice, and I remember it on the last day of one year and the first day of another, I'm soothed by the knowledge that when I am, I can be, and it just is, life will give me just exactly what I need when I need it most. A flat tire to stop me. A friend to fix it to humble me. The ability to show gratitude for it all through my favorite of avenues: the written word.

I resolve in 2010 and in all the decades I live, to trust, to not judge, to let my heart be taken. To notice that clock on Pico Boulevard that says 2:11pm at 2:11pm. To order the apple cobbler when the feeling takes me. To go to the gym less and listen to myself more. To wear rainboots in the sunshine. And play barefoot in the rain. To write a whole book I will sell at the store and people will read on their summer vacation.

To be. More often than not. I, resolve.

Happy New Year.