I read this article in The Rolling Stone that pretty much said that by the time 2100 rolls around, the population of the human species will be cut down to approximately 500 million. 6 billion people can kiss their asses good-bye.
Walking from Mahar to the Union, I told him this revelation that I found striking. The snow, which would have been otherwise drifting softly, stung our eyes in pelts from the Lake Ontario wind. We lit our cigarettes with skills acquired from four years of Oswego. I said, “So pretty much we’re fucked.”
He said, “Yeah, but by then we’ll be dead.”
It was that moment that I realized the absurdity of my life. Campus was eerily quiet, with a few students staggering out of the buildings after 5 sleep-less nights from finals. You could tell the bleak sun still reflected off the snow just enough to make their eyes squint, their heads throbbing from algorithms and pointless historical facts that were pouring out of their heads each step they took away from the building. I laughed.
Yes, my life is absurd. So is everybody’s. Even Hitler’s wrath will be felt only through reading accounts or seeing pictures. People will claim, “How horrendous, how horrible that somebody could ever do that.” But for the most part, his actions will be a ripple in the fabric of human history. It won’t be real. The footprints I leave behind in the snow will be long gone. The roads traveled, the friends made, everything, will not matter. A small girl from a small town who had heart-pains from her ability to love too hard will mean nothing.
I’ve had this experience before, namely, on planes. The woman sitting across the aisle from me is very, very pregnant. She lightly touches her cross around her neck and touches her head, her chest and her shoulders with her eyes shut. I smile lightly and place my forehead on the cold window pane. The planes wheels gently lift off the ground and I stare at the ground. First the cars become invisible, followed by big yellow buses. Then culvasacs become distant jagged circles. Then patches of farmland stick out in their different shades of greens, browns, tans. Wisps of clouds glide past my window and then it is all gone.
