Gosh.
All this talk about 2012, and the end of the world, has made me both hungry and excited. That’s a dangerous combination, coupled with the fact that Lil’ Wayne, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Janeane Garofalo are listed on various 2012 websites as celebrity believers in this Doomsday Prophecy. I mean, please…
That’s enough right there to make me gorge myself to near death on a jar of warm mayonnaise.
The essential southern food staple in repose.
To be honest, I’m not sure where my depth of awe in the Apocalypse even comes from. I don’t know why it intrigues me so much. I’m sure, like most everything else I learned, it was tacked onto the underside of some Bible lesson I was taught as a child, at Tigi’s feet, which were usually planted right in front of the stove. It’s not an uncommon sight: mixing faith with a wooden spoon.
That makes it sound a little like a beating.
It wasn’t, not really. Not physically, anyway.
I recognize that faith requires a bruise, sometimes…or, a deep cut across that list of things you think, or want, or try to believe in. It was a good reminder to learn about faith while supper was being fixed. There’s a definite correlation between the two; it’s what makes cornbread soul food.
In the Christian faith there’s hardly a more anticipatory event than the marriage of Them to Rapture nee Apocalypse. For everyone else, I suppose there’s just the anxious wait…to see if comes true or not. But, whichever way you want to spin it, it’s all getting a little out of hand, this Doomsday business.
And I’m loving every minute of it.
I’m young, but I’ve lived through a lot. And not just me, I mean my whole generation. The laundry list of events we’ve witnessed firsthand is staggering: Katrina, 9/11, the 2004 Tsunami, Y2K, William Shatner’s Roast on Comedy Central. It seems like tragic world events are happening with more and more frequency.
What's your frequency, Kenneth?
Either that, or I’m watching too much television.
It all makes me nervous. Then, again, it’s supposed to. We’ve been living in the Age of Anxiety since the end of World War II. I think I believe that. I need to believe it; it makes me more sympathetic to U.L.
I’ve said before that the attraction we perversely find in ourselves when drawn to such disasters is the safe and equalizing effect such disasters have over us. After 9/11, we remembered that we were a nation of peoples, different but necessary. We loved each other. Churches became important again. Faith was found, in the backs of closets and dusty, but still: there it was. So, we pulled it out and put it on the coffee table. We made pies and casseroles and invited friends over. We ran up phone bills, went over our “minutes.”
Until it felt OK to not care so much, so vividly. That’s sort of how our cycle goes: we stress into doing right, we rest into being wrong.
But, now, here we are again, thanks to the Mayans, sitting in a new testy silence ruminating on the threatening possibility of another absolute annihilation at the end of 2012 (in December, my birthday month no less).
The fear comes from our complete inability to do anything about it, if it’s true.
There’s certainly nothing I can do about it, in the next three and a half years. I mean, not about stopping the world from ending, but I can eat. I am more than capable of going broke pub-clubbing from restaurant to restaurant, in this present interim.
So, I’m thinking about that, instead.
And that’s a lot of stress, to think about what foods I want to eat, or what dishes I want to try in the kitchen over the next 42 months. I don’t even know where Tigi’s wooden spoon is. This is not an easy task: planning will be have to planned. I’ll have to quit my job, take what meager savings I have and map out a clear, concise itinerary for my Doomsday Delectables Tour, highlighting which restaurants are truly worth stopping for, which grocers stock the finest ingredients.
It’s intense.
I liken it to the extreme pressure a death row inmate must face when he leans across the table and tells his lawyer what he wants for his last meal. There are simply too many delicious food combos to consider: do you go classic and simple and keep it all PB&J, or do you demand a choice filet with a rich peppercorn sauce and Baked Alaska for dessert?
It’s maddening to think about, and I’ve only got 1196 days left. Which I should point out is hardly fair: death row inmates get years and years to listen and understand their pallate’s sincerest needs. According to the 2012 Doomsday Clock, I won’t even have enough time to finish my doctorate before the world ends, much less commit a capitol murder offense.Right now, you're wishing you'd taken that bite.
And that’s fine by me because I just don’t have that kind of time, right now.There’s such a huge degree of uncertainty, these days: will the world end; where will I be when it ends; is the economy permanently damaged; who keeps turning on the water hose behind my house and leaving it on all day…I mean these are the important questions.
And, I’m sorry, but I can only answer one of them. I know exactly where I’ll be when the world ends: in the kitchen, cooking.
I always make extra, don’t worry…so feel free to drop by. And, on the way, could you stop by Wal-Mart, or somewhere, and get a few things? Like water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks, and vegetable seeds. We’re going to need these things if we intend to survive.
Oh, yeah, and a bottle of white, too, please. Pinot Grigio (not a dreadful Chardonnay)
I mean, the end of the world is not an excuse to be tacky, right?
Let’s go out as gauche as we came in…
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