Frances Blues

Marigold is forcing me to read another Douglas Coupland book, Life after God. It is quick and good so far, like Marigold said. I was reading it earlier with the TV news on mute in the background, a giant fire ball of destruction named Frances spinning our way. It now looks like Frances might not blast the hell out of us, and keep the annihilation centered on Florida and it's voting public. But still I almost wish it would come our way. Call me an apocalypse freak, but I like the idea of the world ending in small and drastic ways. For instance, I would like the power to go out for a few days and some major street flooding. No deaths or billions of dollars of property damage, but something to shake us up a bit. (On that note, earthquakes are also fun, in my sick way) I think one of the attractions of nature-induced destruction is the revenge factor. We humans crap all over this fine planet and it deserves a little payback every now and then. And that IS personal. Mother Nature is out to even the board up, show us we ain't all powerful like we would like to think.

Also, like the instant satisfaction of popping your ears after hours being plugged, the instant downfall of our vast civilization, both technologically and socially, is incredibly interesting to me. Maybe I want my life to be like a novel or movie, and because I'm not personally doing anything about that, I want nature to. Douglas Coupland says, "When you are young, you always expect that the world is going to end. And then you get older and the world still chugs along and you are forced to re-evaluate your stance on the apocalypse as well as your own relationship to time and death. You realize that the world will indeed continue, with or without you, and the pictures you see in your head. So you try to understand the pictures instead." Yeah, but that's not as fun as mass destruction. So I guess I haven't gotten old enough yet to try to understand the pictures in my head.