Notes from the
End of the World

Each night in 2020 I’m writing a short post because I want to etch these strange times into my memory before I forget them. Before the world changes completely.

February 26, 2020

Cross

Ash Wednesday and people walk the streets with smudged crosses on their foreheads. A beautiful ritual, ancient and haunted.

February 25, 2020

Jabs

Instructional videos at the train station teach me how to behave in 2020. If there’s gunfire, take cover. Silence your cellphone.

February 24, 2020

Salmiakki

Meanwhile the television says things like “jawbone damage may occur” and “America’s most trusted home surveillance system.”

February 23, 2020

Virus

She scrolls through websites that sell protective face masks while I half-watch a conspiratorial documentary about our hyper-mediated world.

February 22, 2020

Pattern

The machine says tens of millions of people will flood into Las Vegas as well as Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Houston.

February 21, 2020

Bow

Billboards along Interstate 90 tell me that God owes us nothing, love is an action verb, and the key to forgiveness was hung on the cross.

February 20, 2020

Perfect

A man studies yesterday’s horoscopes on the train. He carefully highlights a line that says today is the day to take action.

February 19, 2020

Event

Debate night in America. We tune in because we need to know: Who can withstand the punishment of live television?

February 18, 2020

Love

I remember sitting in a cathedral on a snowy February morning and watching an elderly couple hold hands.

February 17, 2020

Eye

Sharks have a transparent membrane that allows them to see despite the blood and carnage that fills the water when it attacks.

February 16, 2020

Lake

The 45th parallel is the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole, and you can feel the geography shift when you see all that big pine and cold water.

February 15, 2020

Blue

Why are so many visions of the future cast in cool tones? Blues and greys, whites and silvers.

February 14, 2020

Future

A vaguely human-shaped slab of bronze staggers into a ferocious wind, its body on fire, determined to walk.

February 13, 2020

Ghost

The first gods must have been born while we slept.

February 12, 2020

Stranger

Nearly every advertisement on the subway trumpets the virtue of having your favorite meals, outfits, entertainments, mattresses, and toothbrushes delivered straight to your door.

February 11, 2020

Dreams

Waking up this morning, the world doesn’t feel much different from the illogic of sleep.

February 10, 2020

Powerball

The only noise tonight is the highway and it sounds like the sea.

February 9, 2020

Clutter

I catch a glimpse of a beloved actor from the 1980s smiling across three flatscreens in an empty lobby, encouraging everyone to triple reverse-mortgage their homes.

February 8, 2020

Badlands

Strange how I’m embarrassed to write our president’s name, a name that looks like an obscenity on the page. Maybe it’s because I thought we deserved a worthy villain.

February 7, 2020

Decision

I scroll down the aisles of the office supply store, soothed by the racks of folders, binders, and containers that promise an organized and efficient life.

February 6, 2020

Twilight

‘Civil twilight’ is an elegant term for the moment just before the sun sinks beneath the horizon. It might be a fitting name for these strange years.

February 5, 2020

Boot

My eighty-year-old German neighbor and I picked at our omelettes while a television in the corner of the diner delivered the vote count.

February 4, 2020

Change

New York’s skyline stopped me in my tracks this afternoon, reminding me that I live in an increasingly alien city.

February 3, 2020

Seeing

Walking down street tonight, I find myself paying closer attention to shadow and light, reminding myself that yes, this is plenty.

February 2, 2020

Birthday

I wonder if deep down each of carries a fantasy of one day becoming an ascetic or a mystic, some hardwired notion of stripping our lives bare and praying in the gloom.

February 1, 2020

Desert

No wonder so many religions began in the desert. The raptures and visions of the ancients were the most rational response to so much sky.

January 31, 2020

Fire

Long-simmering anxiety has a new focal point, a new excuse for indulging in much darker fears. Borders are being closed.

January 30, 2020

Static

These are destabilizing days when there always seems to be a screen playing something upsetting in the room.

January 29, 2020

Light

Finding lightness becomes the job. And if it cannot be found, it must be invented.

January 28, 2020

Glitch

The mathematical precision of these birds looked improbable. Maybe it was a sign of some cosmic change, a hidden pattern made visible.

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