Tectonic

The word is that 1999 is the final year for California, she falls in. The fault line between Hawaii and the San Andreas is the most active in the world, historically. She's been quiet for the last few hundred and that worries people who think about these things. She hadn't been very quiet for the last few million. Her silence is being answered by increased activity in California and it would appear that her rebuttal notes are in place because out there in the Pacific, the Ocean Quiet, there have been rumors of a break. The Navy's fixed sonar picked it up first, as they would prefer, but it wasn't long before the white-coats had their beards wired into the ocean floor listening for that beautiful tension, that Nobel Prize of an anomaly that signals "It's on." The sort of voice heard just before the gun-loading scene. The voice God would have on the serious days. The last seven.

The plate will shift down and to the West, picking up California and sliding underneath Hawaii. The tidal wave following will destroy most of the South Pacific and leave us with a brand new salt lake, so the old maps will be correct again. It will be Armageddon for the Mormons and vacation for whatever has managed to live through the testing in Nevada. A brand new beach to look out over, wondering when it's your turn to swim.

So everything will be different again - and we'll get to see it. We'll be alive for that paragraph in the book, we can tell our grandkids about the day God took back the edges, The day the world became flat again. The squid that rise up will be ten times the size of the worst dragon and they will nest underwater in Pearl Harbor. Their sex will make mountains.

Meanwhile, the wind picks up tonight leaving me with little doubt there will be no palm trees waiting in the morning. I miss my closest friend very much and I can't believe there's no time to be had, to get together, to talk it out. There was always time before. Do things change? Can things really change? California is going to fall into the ocean. The dragons are flying. Last night I dreamt I'd lost everything, it had all slipped away. I could see it through the water, dimming slowly, washing through faded time and then I was alone. I could only remember enough to completely regret everything I hadn't done. It was more than not getting to say "Goodbye." It was as if I'd failed to ever say "Hello." I'd never been able to understand or return the love around me. The last thing, before I woke, was a vision of myself on my knees, my arms wrapped around the legs of a forgiving woman. Not a mother but a wife. A lover. I woke up with a vague feeling of that love, a moment of eternal security, that answer. I woke up with just enough to keep me alive. To keep me in love with all of it.

So "there will be time, there will be time..." We'll put on a face to meet the sun again. In the New Year, the Year of the Ocean. I need some of your time ... I need you to tell me about California.

I'd never been there.