It’s the end of the world as we know it…

“Not only are there no happy endings,’ she told him, ‘there aren’t even any endings.”
–Neil Gaiman/American Gods

Is it really that there are no endings, or is it just that you really don’t know when something has really, truly, definitely ended until you yourself have ceased to be?

In the book American Gods (which you all should read, because it’s wonderful in nearly every way a book can be wonderful) the goddess Bast tells the newly dead Shadow this as he hopes to be able to choose a happy ending to his life once he has been judged. A goddess knows.

She knows that even death may not be final.

Shadow already knows this, as he had accidentally resurrected his own dead wife earlier in the book. I hate it when that happens.

I suspect some things are final. About as final as death, anyway. There are some people I fully intend and expect to stay dead to me even though they are probably still alive. I have been wrong about that in at least one case, so I do wonder. If you can forgive what previously seemed unforgivable, I suppose it leaves an entry for a non-ending. Whatever that looks like.

With a long enough time frame, does everything and everyone come back around to pop out at you like the hand coming out of the grave at the end of Carrie? I suppose it could be more of a happy non-ending, which is really what we mean when there’s a happy ending. Unless it’s a happy ending like in horror movies when people just stop getting eaten by zombies.

Do I even have a point here? I am not at all sure I do.
It’s the cat’s fault. He won’t let me sleep.
Having a crispy fried brain is not conducive to such things as coherent thought and logical writing.

Or maybe it’s more like jelly…
Still.

I suspect Bast was probably not entirely correct. Some people never look back. Never think of the people, places, things they leave behind. Or so I hear. If you still think about something or someone, can you really say it has ended?

Maybe.
Maybe not.

I used to be so decisive about this sort of thing.

Black and white.

Now?
Full spectrum color.

Except my hair, which is starting to be gray.
Is that an ending of my brown hair or a beginning of a new color?
Hmmm?

Summer is starting today. Is that a beginning of a new season, an end to the old one, or simply a continuation of eternal time?
All of the above.

It all depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?







2 thoughts on “It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

  1. I recently read American Gods for the first time. I sort of believe that endings are like truths, context and perspective define them.

    1. Truths and facts are squiggly creatures, aren’t they, and so are endings. Or beginnings. Or anything.

      As David Byrne says:

      Facts are simple and facts are straight
      Facts are lazy and facts are late
      Facts all come with points of view
      Facts don’t do what I want them to
      Facts just twist the truth around
      Facts are living turned inside out
      Facts are getting the best of them
      Facts are nothing on the face of things
      Facts don’t stain the furniture
      Facts go out and slam the door
      Facts are written all over your face
      Facts continue to change their shape

      But then not everyone shares my somewhat irrational belief in the inherent flexibility of…Everything.

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