MetaPosting the End of…?
The signs all point to 88, but I feel like I can’t quite get the DeLorean to hit the clocktower at precisely 10:04 pm on November 12, 1955. I can’t even seem to write this thing about why I can’t write the things I want to write.
To me, it doesn’t matter whether you call it Synchronicity, The Universe, God, Fate, Time, The Laws of Physics, the Flow, The Force™, confirmation bias, or whatever, but it’s been quite the year, 2016. The number 88 is following me around — downright stalking me, really. I told my coworker that I’ve stopped behind an inordinate number of 88’s on state-assigned license plates, and the next time we drove together, she noted the -8888 license plate before I did.
Today I saw a ‘Destny88’ plate. I set out to write 3 things around the election, but I’ll admit, even as a person who’d been warning everyone around me that Hillary was a huge mistake, I wasn’t prepared for the events now only beginning to unfold in the wake of the election.
I walked into my dad’s house to watch the returns and said “I really think Trump can win this, and by the end of the night had a strange mix of comfort that my assessments were correct, and sheer terror that my assessments were correct.
Then, I got a call about a job for which I’d applied three months earlier, and not only did I get it, it’s turned out to be a great work environment and culture, a perfect balance of challenge and expectations. But it doesn’t quite end there. Right after I explained I was about to write a 3 part series, starting with the story of visiting my classmate-turned school shooter in prison last year, I got a job at the very news station that has footage of the coverage of that event from 1988.
It’s reasonably possible they have footage of 12-year-old me talking about returning to school after the shooting somewhere in their morbidly named ‘morgue’ housing the now-ancient three-quarter inch tapes archived in case this footage is ever needed again. Another 3/4.. huh. More confirmation bias.
I spent the 28th anniversary of that event in an edit bay watching the time capsule of 80’s hair styles and overt expressions of grief, but mostly affirming belief in the religious denomination of my youth in living color at 30 frames per second. While I don’t have permission to use moving video, I am allowed to use stills from that footage, and it’s hard to feel that my reluctance to finish that project wasn’t somehow related to the ‘waiting for the time to be right’ — that time appearing to be right now.
As if that wasn’t enough, the woman who kindly took some time out of her already busy day to pull this tape also happened to be the young camerawoman who captured this footage 28 years ago. She didn’t know everything she had captured — which already shows in living color many of the details I’d been working so hard to describe.
One shot in particular was so moving and personal, I decided to neither include it, nor even describe it. They didn’t know what they had, and I’m fine if it stays that way. There’s enough emotional detail captured in that grainy footage as it is.
And I haven’t even started talking about geopolitics, or the undercurrent that is guiding my country, my species and my planet.
It’s hard to describe how interconnected and impossible it is to relate.
I hope I have the tenacity to finish at least the first piece by the end of the year. I have already described it as ‘the last piece I intend to write on the subject.’ I have long known that I was nowhere near the top of the list of those traumatized by that event, but I’ve always thought it’s that middle that has given me a certain perspective. I want to have said my peace, and not continue to reopen this wound for what could be seen as salacious reasons. If I can’t finally connect the point I’ve been trying to make, there’s no point in continuing to bring up this portion of the past.
My last word will live as long as this digital platform remains, and perhaps it is also that drive for final closure that prevents me from beginning this final revision — (the first draft has already been written for quite some time, but now needs serious revision thanks to the new footage/pictures/viewing).
Where I go next depends on where I land that particular attempt.
I feel that guns are the bridge — I just saw the movie ‘Miss Sloane’ which seems to bridge into the next segment, abstracted from personal experience to policy, legislation, and values. It’s crass enough linking the two, I can at least be decent enough to separate the essays.
That movie started with actress Jessica Chastain staring directly into the camera, seriously speaking the following paragraph:
Lobbying is about foresight. About anticipating your opponent’s moves and devising countermeasures. The winner plots one step ahead of the opposition, and plays her trump card just after they play theirs.
You’ll be seeing this quote again soon. You’ll be seeing my Trump card as soon as I can pull it out of the deck. I know it’s in here somewhere. But all my friends are heathens; I must take it slow.
It’s a lot to get out, and it must come out in exactly the right way. Criticality is a bitch.
If this is the last thing I write in 2016 — and I hope to [God/The Universe/The Flow/NDT] it is not — I’m happy I ended the year here. It’s been a heck of a ride. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you about it in a way that you’ll understand. And that’s more me than you, I know that.
