i

I bought a new-to-me car last week – thank you, it’s a boy, his name is Darwin and you should see his eyelashes, incredible!

I feel immense guilt over this purchase and how much joy it is bringing me because a) I’m incurring debt, however small and however manageable and debt makes it hard for me to breathe and b) death, death, death.

I can’t even – how can ordinary things, selfish things, materialistic things, such unimportant things when, this? Helpless, frustrated, privileged – I am no activist. When I stand on the sidelines of protests, ill with other people’s pain and anger, all I can think about is the futility of it all. When a government doesn’t care about human lives why would it care about the public opinion of… aliens?

Guilt. Pain. End times. But hey, I have a sexy, new (to me) car. Want to go for a ride?

ii

Guilt, pain, end times – we go to a protest, then, to a party. In the car (not mine), the cognitive dissonance is killer and I wonder what we’re doing. We can’t dance, laugh, play. Not possible. Not right now, not tonight. Not. Possible.

But it is. At the party, we dance.

You can meet the end times in a sack cloth with ash on your forehead or in stiletto heels with a glass of cheap red wine in your hand.

Actually – splurge, get a good wine.

After all, end times.

iii

Ok, so it’s probably not so much end times as same old, same old – but really, don’t you think this experiment called Homo sapiens has failed? Sure, it’s made some cool art and built spaceships, but overall, it’s a nasty, vicious species, destructive and selfish. Pull the plug, bring on another flood (Homo sapiens has facilitated the frequency with which these occur, so it seems appropriate), start again – or maybe don’t. This time, give the Earth to the octopi.

Better yet, the orcas. They seem to want it…

iv

The sad thing about orcas is that they will never know the pleasure of driving down a spirally highway in a sexy car with a tight turn radius and a killer sound system.

I know I’m burning fossil fuels and contributing to global warming and the flood that might wipe us all out. You’re welcome, YHW, just doing my part to hasten Armageddon. End times.

Same old, same old times.

v

I park Darwin in the pull-out over the cliff and look down at Earth over which I have no dominion, rolling hills, mountains in the distance – I can’t see it, but behind them, there’s the ocean.

It’s beautiful. So beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I let my heart break.

End times.

Same old, same old.

“Jane”