First
Apocalypse
It's a hot, dry summer day. My sister and I are in the dusty back yard of our
house in Iran. She's four. I'm one and a half. She
plays by the side of the wading pool. I'm in one of
those toddler walkers, a diaper with training wheels
for those of us with ornamental baby legs.
So I'm
paddling around
the yard, looking at the dusty ground, my back to my sister and
her amusements at the wading
pool. All the
ground before my feet is a variation of dust, warm and bland.
I stumble on. Suddenly, a BRILLIANT, COLORFUL THING lands, SPLAAT, on the ground in front of
me.
I am stunned. I wonder what it is. The straw white
color that is the rest of the ground is nothing compared
to it! Such a vision!
Before I can figure it out, another
one lands, SPLAAT! And another. Each one is
more brilliant and varied than the next. Rich, vivid hues,
complex patterns, pulsing and shimmering in
the sunlight. I stare at these bright, shimmering gems in
confusion and wonder.
Suddenly my plump calf
is hit with the same SPLAAT!
I am alarmed! I look at my
leg to see if a brilliant creature has landed
(and if it needs to be brushed off in self preservation!)
but all I see is my own calf, and a droplet of cool
water trickling down it. And then, from the corner of my eye I see something incoming. A shimmering roiling
droplet of water explodes on the ground by my foot.
I sense the cold water on my little toe and I see
the dust dissolve instantly, miraculously, into brilliance.
It all clicks. I turn to see that my sister, the agent
of this revelation, is splashing water, and it
is crashing on the dusty ground, revealing the
multi-colored
marble stones beneath.
Dust to vivid life. 
The picture has faded. It really was quite brilliant. Then again, maybe I hadn't
seen nothin' yet.
Love Apocalypse:
I was in love (or obsessed). I was stunned by the dazzle of this
beloved against the dust of the rest of the masses ("The beloved
stands out like the moon against the stars", says Rumi).
It didn't work,
what can I say? I wept. I slept. I dreamt of my (afore-mentioned)
First Apocalypse. I awoke refreshed.
I see now that
the dazzling
world is only hidden by dust, and that brilliant
boy simply had
the capacity to remove the dust by
himself. (That or some chubby
baby angel stands behind me and occasionally throws
a water balloon
at people in front of me, confusing
me).
We're all
dust covered brilliance
in a dazzling but dust covered universe and need only a splash
of
water for the glory to be revealed. (Then again, maybe he was that
rare and brilliant.)
My childhood apocalyptic vision renewed, I decided that instead
of inappropriately singling this fool out (see how fast the water
dries and the dust obscures his memory!) and thinking of him as
one of the only vivid things around, I should figure out how to
engage in a metaphoric water dance with my fellow planet mates,
directing the stream of the water of life on everything around me,
and see it for all its true brilliance (or true ugliness. Some things
might look better with a thick layer of silt...woo).
Wow, that was all one sentence.
Maybe LOVE is a commitment to keep splashing
your beloved and dancing in the rain.
The Second Droplet of the Apocalypse
Wash Me and I Shall Be/Apocalypse:
California is a great state. We have the Sierra Nevada mountain range right in
our backyard.
"Sierra Nevada" in Spanish means "snowy
mountains," but the range doesn't
get its name from snow. The very
rocks of the mountains are a light and luminous
color. Above the tree line, huge white
boulders slumber and the range looks snowy
even in summer.
I got back
home from a weekend hiking trip
along the John Muir Trail one Tuesday night at
1:00 am (OK, it's not quite my back yard. It's
an 7 hour drive to the JMT). I took
a NICE hot bubble bath with salts and
all. Slept in NICE clean sheets. Oh how delightful
is my bed. We left some people out there
in the mountains who wanted to hike for another
week. As the weekenders hiked out, a thunderstorm
descended. Don't fear for our die hards.
They had raingear and weren't far from a ranch (Note:
Sadly, that was the last we ever heard from them).
In any case, I hiked out of there in a blaze of glory. The rain was falling gently
from a partly cloudy sky, thunderheads gathering
in the distance, radiant godbeams anchoring the trail
back.
And that rain and light made the
colors so vivid. The Sierras are magnificent
to begin with. The rain takes
it to another level. In that Christian hymn,
they sing "Wash
me & I shall be whiter than snow (warning, link plays music)."
In the Sierra when
the rain washes things, the white
granite dust that covers everything comes off and the
illusion of being
whiter than snow dissolves. Things
get darker, more colorful. They find their rich
true
color.
We need to work this principle into another verse of the "Wash Me" hymn so it
doesn't alienate people of color who could conceivabely
find the metaphor constricting or offensive.
Then again,
perhaps this never bothered anyone, and everyone
got that metaphor. Plus, we didn't
need to go to the Sierra in the rainstorm
to expand that metaphor. Your average laundry
detergent commercial already has - whites their
whitest, colors their brightest, etc.
But going to the Sierra is more fun.
Anyway, keep on hiking and
tripping and
letting your light
shine, whatever its hue. The revelation is in your true colors,
not
the white wash. Glow, baby.
Apocalypse: The Next Generation:
 And
here we see the enduring fascination of yet another child mesmerized
by one of the Four Droplets of the Apocalypse.
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