the scariest thing on the planet
It is New Year's Day. 3:22 a.m. New Year's Day. I am sipping champagne. I have been up a very long time. First, to finish the launch of Three Pages, the comedy scene writing contest sponsored by, um, well basically me. You can go see at three pages.
I finished the web page work with ten minutes before midnight to take a bath and shave my legs (without even cutting one off yay!) and with wet hair and intact legs I watched fireworks go off the Space Needle and wrote resolutions too fast I will want to revise tomorrow but for now I am resolute and just in time (yay!) and thought what a startling time it is to be alive.
A century has passed. A millenium is being born. People write to each other across a world in two seconds and nobody blinks like this is unordinary.
But it is.
I stare at cities and wonder what was it like here before we were here? What was it like for the first of us seeing this plain or valley or huge trees before men in hard hats came and made wild things all go away?
The shadows must have been full of fear.
Maybe that is why we are all so afraid today. Of nothing that makes sense. But human beings carry fear with them into every place and every action with a preternatural grip. Human beings live their lives in fear. There must have been a time when that had a payoff. We must have had a reason to be afraid. Or why would fear with us be so built in I can not tell whether it is learned or instinct? Did the first people survive shadows in new places? Or did the scenary eat them alive and not even leave a whisper behind?
Maybe it just ate people who weren't paranoid enough to stay alive.
The whole world is just about tamed now and mostly animals do not hop out of shadows to eat people any more. Well except if you live in Australia. (In Australia people have reason to be afraid. Even those cute little tree bears are mean. Gadzooks.) But once the whole world for us was a place of predators and shadows. So maybe we have good excuses for being afraid all the time. Maybe back then fear kept us alive. Now though we sure pick dumb things to be afraid of. "Fear of love." That slays me. "Gosh I am in love with you and what if we lived happily ever after?"
Um. Right. What if?
"Fear of success." "Gosh what if I did this right and things worked out and I had to live happily ever after?"
Well sure, I just can not think of a worse possible outcome.
Hello?
(If I hear one more struggling writer say he or she is "afraid of success" by the way I am going to just keel. Do not even be afraid of success. Success is so far out of your reach if you are a struggling beginner you should be shaking in your boots about gingivitis before you even worry about "fear of success" and I cannot get an answer out of my dentist on what gingivitis even is but the Listerine guy says it is dour.)
Now we press plastic buttons that send messages across worlds in two seconds and people walk on moons and the only things we fear are each other outside our calm walls that are not really safe but we pretend they are. And, um, love. And, um, success. Now, we walk down cement sidewalks and the only thing likely to eat us is another human being because everything else we have paved under, over, and around with safety called concrete that Romans invented.
I am surrounded by all things concrete to see a new century and millenium. I sip champagne and think how remarkable it is to be alive right now, this moment. Watching a century and millenium pass and new ones born. About all the wonders we human beings have created to keep ourselves safe.
And all the monsters we have created in the process.
We are the scariest thing on the planet.
And we are afraid.
Go see the new contest page. It is at three pages. If you win I will adopt you.
Smooches,
Your Adams Girl
PS: No one have hurt feelings, I just did not do cards this year. It was a put out fires year for me. But I am thinking of you.
