Bugbear, or The World Doesn’t End (on May 21st)

The stone is a mirror which works poorly.
Nothing in it but dimness. your dimness or its dim-
ness, who’s to say? in the hush your heart sounds
like a black cricket.
- Charles Simic, from The World Doesn’t End

I love the prose poetry of Charles Simic, especially those in The World Doesn’t End. As with any title, and especially with Simic’s titles, meaning is open to interpretation, though some interpretations (those which have been given some thought and have some textual evidence to back them up) are more right or closer to right than others. Since I picked up the little, square book – shaped pleasingly like the paragraph-sized poems within – I’ve always thought the title meant to invoke a sense of expansiveness.  That, like a circle or a sphere, or the curvature of our planet, the world has no beginning and thus no end.  That sort of all-inclusiveness, that continuity, is a fantastic concept, a magic idea that seems very simple, but can be and has been applied to anything from the identity of the human species to time to history to language. I devour this philosophy, and struggle epically with it, because for such a basic concept, it’s amazingly slippery and hard to define in practical situations.

I think I first noticed the end of the world billboards at about the beginning of March.  “Cry mightily unto God! … May 21st, The Bible Guarantees It!” it said, as I walked to my laundromat, carrying the sum total of my clothes in a battered maroon suitcase.  At first I was perplexed – I thought the world would be ending in 2012? – and so went home to my internet connection to figure out what this new deal was.  It turned out to be, as most everyone now knows, the product of numerology and a man who has cried Rapture! once before, and been proved wrong.  As I write these lines it’s now 6:05PM on the West Coast, and the last chance that he and his followers had to be right has slipped away.  That night two months ago, I went to bed and had a dream that a pale woman crept behind my shower curtain and, as I sat unable to move, she just drifted slowly towards me, until I slapped her.  Then, she abruptly turned insolent, and drifted away.  When I woke up, I knew the dream had come from the billboard, from having some anxiety about it.  It didn’t help that May 21st is my anniversary with K., at least it didn’t at the time.  It ended being the best possible coincidence.

Things were OK, life got in the way, etc. etc. and suddenly it was Monday, May 16th, one of the busiest work weeks I’ve had so far.  I went over this previously, but all the work work work and the chores and the things that needed to be worried about and then done so I could stop worrying about them piled up and then it was Tuesday.  And then I freaked out.  I had quietly, in the back of my mind, already been freaking out for a few days, but had been pushing it away.  “This is silly. Malicious, yes, but also just a human form of angling for notoriety, not the proof we skeptics have all been waiting for that God does exist.” “But, what if it is? What if you backed the wrong horse or, worse, neglected to back any horse at all?” My emotions are prone to spiral as they argue with my reason, getting deeper into a contrarian, doomed, sad place the more it’s fought with by my other (internal) half.  K. often embodies that half of myself, telling me in a calm, strong way what I’ve already told myself without success.  I unloaded my anxiety about this onto him, and he eventually made it all right with me again, but I needed to decompress.  I needed several insomniac nights, stressful days, a night of drinking, and a day of convalescence after.  Excess isn’t something I indulge in anymore, figuring my body doesn’t need more punishment, but it seemed right on Friday, especially if it was going to be my last night on the Earth as I knew it.

Up until then, I had interpreted the signs around me and come up with all the right reasons why my anxiety was unnecessary, misplaced, but what I couldn’t tell myself was, why was I anxious? I’m not a religious person, but, for better or for worse, I am superstitious. I throw salt over my shoulder, I hate hearing ghost stories, and there’s an ongoing war between my delight in picking change up off the ground and my suspicion that picking up the ones with tails up is bad luck. I picked one up today, and it’s sitting in my pocket like a little lead weight.  I feel better once they go in my change jar.

Yet that day came, passed, and was largely forgotten.  We’re going on a week now with the world still blissfully intact, sunny even, here in Boston, and yet I’m still anxious. Anxiety for me is like a drug (not a good drug or drug-like substance either, it’s not sugar or nicotine or caffeine), the more I am anxious the more my brain and emotions are hard-wired to create anxiety or to accept it automatically when it approaches.  This week I’ve had at least two (small) panic attacks. Last week it was the prospect of being able to do no more in this life except die, this week it’s having too many little things to do.  Doctor, dentist, weddings, birthdays, dinners with friends.  It’s ridiculous! My birthday is a fun thing, as are dinners with friends.  Birthday will be a day-long celebration, but 2 dinners = 2 nights out of 30 days. The wedding will be fun too.  All I have to do is show up and be a guest, be pretty and eat the food in front of me, visit with my family and be plied liberally with beer and wine.  In a couple weeks I’ll also be trying to find my first of 3 new roommates, which, I admit, is not stressful, but will be over in a week (judging by the success of previous roommate searches). Check-ups suck too, but only take about an hour each.  Of course it’s a lot, of course! May was busy too, which is probably why I’ve gotten fatigued from Doing Things for so long.  It’s horribly sad though that I’ve managed to conflate the Note Fun Things and the Fun Things into one big ball of Things to Be Stressed About.  I’m trying to get over it.  And this is the solution to the mystery, is that I was anxious about the end of the world because my anxiety was looking for something to unleash itself upon.  What better object than the potential end of days?  If I can be stressed about my own birthday or a dental cleaning, then I can definitely be stressed about fire and brimstone, no sweat.

This is why, cut to this week, and I still have a little ball-shaped, lumpen anxiety growth housed within my ribs, somewhere between my heart and my stomach.  I’m working away at it, and trying to convince myself that in between the next five weekends there are other days.  We’re talking 30 here, not 10.  Then there are 62 more days after that until September 1st.  Summer’s on.