ANTEBELLUM BLOG: 15.03.20

3/21/20

SO THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WILL END: 3/20/2020

So This is How The World Will End: by Rick Castro 3/20/2020

So this is how the world ends?……… I think not.

As I flee Los Angeles in my dad’s hand-me-down 1990 Ford Explorer, (a soccer mom car if there ever was one)

I’m in the slow lane of the 5 FWY headed northeast. Surprisingly busy on the morning of quarantine at 5am?!

Single passenger cars and Prius’s are whizzing by.. They seam to be going 90 MPH.

I don’t blame them. They are over it…. They can’t wait to flee LA as I do…

They are booking.. I’m the slowpoke driving granny-ish behind all the mack semi trucks in the far right slow lane.

Cars weaving in and out of lanes would usually piss me off.. but not today.. not this morning.

They are over it… THEY ARE OVER IT! THEY ARE OVER IT MUTHA FUCKAS!!

THEY…… ARE……. OVER……. IT!!!!

They wanna get outta dodge.. They wanna escape somewhere… but where?

As I turn onto the 14 FWY , a sense of calm comes over me… I think it comes over my fellow freeway drivers as well..

Much less people.. The morning scenery is beautiful… Low clouds blanket the valley. Its spectacular… Who knew the end of the world would be sooo…. pretty.

I guess when I saw Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia it was depicted as this pretty…. but he’s an avant guard Danish filmmaker.
He makes everything pretty. He directed a TV series called The Kingdom where all the nurses watch splatter porn, and the ambulance drivers play chicken.

The receptionists take bets as to who will punk out first as two ambulances drive head on in the staff parking lot. The entire hospital staff watches on security cams…and he made that pretty.

This scenery is definitely pretty. Now hitting Pearblossom Highway it is serenity.
Like nature is expecting me and made the landscape and sky as inviting as possible.

To help calm my every last frayed nerve.

So this is how the world will end.

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3/20/20

SO THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WILL END: 3/19/2020

So This is How The World Will End: by Rick Castro

So this is how the world ends?…… I think not.

The last time I saw my mother Bee, she was smiling, wrapped in a bright pink blanket given to her by the YWCA. She was all smiles and effervescent, radiating light and happiness in her Alzheimer’s bubble. I told her I love her…. She nodded ok… I tried to tell my dad I love him, but he’s the recalcitrant type…. Even before he was diagnosed with the same disease.

Bee radiated this inner glow, a peace and happiness that only can be found living within your own thoughts. I wanted to take a photo, ( perhaps the last time) but alas, “I’d left my phone in the truck. It was raining, and I didn’t want to put my Rick Owens boots back on.

Too worried about recontamination.

All in all it seemed right it should be a memory, something that only I witnessed, because AL & Bee won’t remember what happened a minute later. It was not supposed to be captured on film. A temporary autonomous zone.

As every day becomes more of a challenge, I find comfort in the most simple things. Somehow I’ve always prepared for this… or was afraid of this… saw the omens many years ago and kept quiet. Didn’t listen to me gut. Which is all I have now.

As I’m writing these thoughts, pulled over in a bleak, deserted gas station on Atlantic Boulevard, A solitary man rides by on his bike with an attached trailer. A little doggy camper containing his beloved pet. Together they go zooming down the empty road. I find this so endearing. They have each other. A man and his dog at the end of the world.

Quiet,.. Solemn… Melancholy. I cling to this visual memory, the way I will cling on my visual of Bee smiling in her pink blanket, for the rest of my days.

After my composure, I make my way down Atlantic Boulevard in search of the cheapest gas.

I pass ambulance and emergency vehicles tending to an accident. As typical with accidents one is compelled to look. It is the solitary man, his bike in shambles, the little doggy camper is crushed to smithereens. The solitary man is wailing inconsolable on the sidewalk.

His beloved pet did not make it…..

So this is how the world will end.

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