"When your only girl betrayed you, boy
what did you do with your wisdom?
Well, you loved that girl again,
you loved that girl again.
... Now who you gonna blame for your trials and tribulations?"
Yep ... living on spongecake. Jimmy Buffett is in short supply around here, we could all use a few palm trees. I could even choke down a margarita if the breeze was just right and the sun was in my eyes. I think the last time the sun was in my eyes was in South Carolina, looking over the bay trying to keep the boats and shark-fins separate. It was a maddening task, those damn sea monsters will be the death of me and all of my kind. We are land-dwellers, you and I,
made for the earth. The sky is there only to give us an abstract, to keep us sane. People may dream in the sky but they sleep in the earth ... and they drown in the ocean.
The word is that 1999 is the final year for California, she falls in. The fault line between Hawaii and the San Andreas is the most active in the world, historically. She's been quiet for the last few
hundred and that worries people who think about these things. She hadn't been very quiet for the last few million. Her silence is being answered by increased activity in California and it would appear that her rebuttal notes are in place because out there in the Pacific, the
Ocean Quiet, there have been rumors of a break. The Navy's fixed sonar picked it up first, as they would prefer, but it wasn't long before the white-coats had their beards wired into the ocean floor listening for that beautiful tension, that Nobel Prize of an anomaly
that signals "It's on." The sort of voice heard just before the gun-loading scene. The voice God would have on the serious days. The last seven.
The plate will shift down and to the West, picking up California and sliding underneath Hawaii. The tidal wave following will destroy most of the South Pacific and leave us with a brand new salt lake, so the old maps will be correct again. It will be Armageddon for the Mormons and vacation for whatever has managed to live through the testing in Nevada. A brand new beach to look out over, wondering when it's your turn to swim.
So everything will be different again - and we'll get to see it. We'll be alive for that paragraph in the book, we can tell our grandkids about the day God took back the edges, The day the world became flat again. The squid that rise up will be ten times the size of the worst dragon and they will nest underwater in Pearl Harbor.
Their sex will make mountains.
Meanwhile, the wind picks up tonight leaving me with little doubt there will be no palm trees waiting in the morning. I miss my closest friend very much and I can't believe there's no time to be had, to get together, to talk it out. There was always time before. Do things change? Can things really change? California is going to fall into the ocean. The dragons are flying. Last night I dreamt I'd lost everything, it had all slipped away. I could see it through the water, dimming slowly, washing through faded time and then I was alone. I could only remember enough to completely regret everything I hadn't done. It was more than not getting to say "Goodbye." It was as if I'd failed to ever say "Hello." I'd never been able to understand
or return the love around me. The last thing, before I woke, was a vision of myself on my knees, my arms wrapped around the legs of a forgiving woman. Not a mother but a wife. A lover. I woke up with a vague feeling of that love, a moment of eternal security, that answer. I woke up with just enough to keep me alive. To keep me in love with all of it.
So "there will be time, there will be time..." We'll put on a face to meet the sun again. In the New Year, the Year of the Ocean. I need some of your time ... I need you to tell me about California.
I'd never been there.
"What did you do when you found the man,
the one that stole your good girl?
Well, you cut that man on down,
you cut him all around.
... Now who you gonna blame for your trials and tribulations?"