a love letter to the world

The world's supposed to end tomorrow, and although I don't believe it will, I can't deny there's something poetic about it, something sort of beautiful about imagining everything going to pieces around us while we flail and cling to our vastly insufficient mortality. It's a morbid kind of beautiful, but it's there nonetheless.

No, I don't suppose it's Armageddon just yet, but it doesn't hurt to have one more excuse to say "I love you" -- or one more excuse to feel guilty about being too shy to say "I love you," maybe. Well, world, I love you, always have, always will, and even if you implode tomorrow and kill all 7 billion human inhabitants and billions more non-human inhabitants in a destructive fit of rage, I'll still love you. You gave me everything in this life I love, and I suppose I'll never be able to say I'm grateful enough. I'll love you forever in all the capacity that my mortal heart can carry, long after it is buried under piles of ashes or soot or whatever it is that's supposed to happen tomorrow. I'll love you forever, past forever, for there must be something longer than that, and I'll miss you even more. You were quite literally my everything. Maybe I'll scream, "How dare you?!" and smash a few dishes if you decide to leave me, or maybe I won't, because I'll be dead, but either way, dear world, still I will love you. I will love all your mountains and oceans, forests and rivers, prairies and dried-up creek beds. I will love all the man-made features you scoffed at but secretly enjoyed -- all your dams and highways and buildings, schools and restaurants and homes. I will love them not for the ugly emptiness of the concrete but for all the stories they have seen. And I will love you, most of all, world, for all the people you gave shelter to and raised as your own.

I don't plan on dying tomorrow. Please know I will be very cross if I do -- there's still so much ahead, you see -- but at the same time, I think you should know that no matter what, I love you. I love you for all the bruises caused by your dumb force of gravity, for all the times I cried and you turned your head away, for all the terrible things you let happen under your watch that make people question the existence of benevolence. Despite all that, I love you. I love this planet and I love this life and I am so very happy I got to share it with you -- for whatever amount of time we have. I don't care.

If all the bridges break and if great floods consume New York City until the Statue of Liberty is merely an arm and a torch, if the power goes out from Tokyo to London coating the earth in an inextinguishable darkness, if zombies rise from their non-existence to conquer the planet, none of which I believe in, well, I'm still very glad for the time I had.

love, me.

P.S. I suppose this is partly inspired by this passage of Lemony Snicket's which is my favorite ever and which makes me cry and which is one of those things that sometimes floats up in your mind randomly because it has lodged itself there so firmly because it is so perfect.