SubscribeThe end is coming.
This of course has different meanings to differing folks. For instance, to me, right now, it means that, tomorrow at oh-dark-thirty, we head for North Carolina, leaving Alabama, passing right through Georgia, departing the South in favor of the almost-South or, better, of the mid-Atlantic region. Better because we are through with the South, through with the too-slow pace, the too-high humidity, the too-much-rain, the too-fried food, the too-radical-right Catholic priests. People being people, the people here can be friendly, generous, helpful, trustworthy, professional…all that stuff. And they can be all the other stuff as well and so why comment on the people? It’s the overall that you are aware of, and (excluding the Catholic priest part) it all just seems…wait for it….too little. In this case, the end being near is a good thing.
Not that we think everything can be painted with that same brush, you understand. We just came back from our fourth visit to the Amsterdam Cafe here in Auburn…not only the best restaurant in Auburn by my lights but arguably one of the better places we’ve eaten in months; highly innovative food with an ever-changing menu good enough that we even gave away gift certificates for the place to the Senior Clinician and 4th Year Student who were responsible for Jake’s care. Tonight I had a beautiful Duck, served medium-rare with a traditional rich orange sauce, sitting on a small bed of ripe-cheese Risotto. Irene had a lovely lamb shank, rare, melt-in-your-mouth, with funky little baby brussel sprouts carmelized in a sweet onion sauce much better than it sounds. Overall, better enough to make you forget you were in Alabama, which I did, prompting me to ask a “head” question about “how long do YOU think the sun will shine?”, which in turn prompted the student/waitresss’s giving me the most vacant of looks. Later, going home, Irene and I agreed that the sun HAS shone about 4.5 billion years and by most conservative reports is good for another 4.5 billion; long enough, certainly that neither of us should worry about it much, and yet we both agreed that we used to scare ourselves sleepless wondering what eternity might be, which prompted the follow-on question between ourselves about the nature of heaven….and from there a probably-facetious inquiry from one of us about why the license plate frames here in Auburn all sport that ridiculous slogan, “The Stars Fell on Alabama”…the question being “Why is that a good thing?” I mean, think about it….if the stars fall on Alabama, no matter where WE happened to be at that moment, we are through. Not as through as quickly as we would be when the sun eventually winks out, because that will have a red-star flame-out factor that will instantly vaporize all oceans on all of the planets in the solar system, quicker-than-instantly vaporizing with it all life. But through. I mean, here’s another thing to think about…we all watch the meteor movies, right? The ones where a little piece of a meteor hits the earth, creating earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, and prompting the return of George W. Bush who will come back iterating that this is all Intelligent Design, or, perhaps worse, Regan, never dead at all, just as I feared, and again stipulating that ketchup really is a vegetable….an errant Californian who never earned the name.
I seem to have wandered, but I was probably nearly through anyway, and tomorrow I really will will be through. Through with Alabama, assuredly, and, assuming a still-burning sun, looking forward to a new day, somewhere – anywhere – else.