Tremor: 3.1, Depth: 6.3 miles, Location: 4.8 kilometers from Amman, Jordan.
Just a heads up, this post is not about Fiona or Sharon.
Are they gone?
Really gone?
Okay, there’s a little bit about Fiona and Sharon.
I’m a sucker for action movies. I hate to admit it, but even though I know Tom Cruise is going to clip the blue wire and it’ll all be okay, that few second pause as the timer clicks down always gets my blood pumping. However, while the blinking red L.E.D. clock makes for a hell of an image, those films with even more of a heart-stopping series of events are the ones with the ticking time bomb you can’t see, but hear. That loud ticking sound that symbolizes the impending action, but not the time of its arrival.
I won’t go through the entire list of ticking time bombs in great detail, but they’re all stories you’ve heard before: A brother teetering on the edge, and dragging the entire family down with him; a family pet in its twilight years; a functional inability to understand what’s going on in my relationship life, and a functional inability of Sharon Van Etten to describe it to me. (That wasn’t a reference to the “Petra” post. I’m just having a hard time connecting with the lyrical content of Tramp these days. When I was going through my last breakup though, it was a godsend.) And even outside forces seem to be on this same countdown. Eid break is in 20 days, the U.S. presidential election is in 37, Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to start a countdown to war with Iran, and it’s only a matter of time before John finally snaps.
And yet, as you can tell by the rather low number, this hasn’t really sunk in yet. Nothing has substantively changed. My brother is still my brother, and my family is working with him. Barkley’s a old dog, but he’s still kicking, and as far as I know, still happy as a clam. Sharon and Fiona (now thinly veiled code names, if code names at all anymore) still treat me exactly the same, and I do them (If anything, things have rolled backwards. But that’s for another day, Winston, Lauren, and the S.I.S. faculty and staff). There is just this constant, monotonous, thundering ticking noise, which is slowly taking over everything I hear. One day, something’s bound to go off, whether in a good or bad way, and on that day, I’ll be ready to deal with it. But until then, I’ll just have to drown it out the only way I know how: Corny, predictable endings to blog posts.
P.S.: Also, Wye Oak. “Civilian”. Great song, and has a verse in there that sums up the “Fiona/Sharon” stuff quite nicely.
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