Advent Calendars

Sometimes the world just seeps away. The houses shed their bricks. The streets molt their pavement. And it's all replaced by something indistinguishable. I remember as a child watching the snow melt, watching the world drain into itself. I remember wishing the sun would just turn away—not so that the snow would stay but so I could linger in the old world for a little while longer.

I wasn’t consulted on the melting of the snow, so if I must find myself in this new world I will make it my own. I‘ll have a Myth of Sisyphus where he’s sledding down a snowy hill and gets to go back up and down again for all eternity. I’ll add a paragraph to all of the history books saying, “No one remembers what happened on July 16, 2021,” because eventually it will be true.

The planets will revolve around the sun up-and-down, like the hands on a clock. I’ll believe Atlantis was already discovered but was underwhelming so the archeologists hushed it up. I’ll know that not every snowflake is unique, but we still haven’t found the duplicates. I’ll believe some art museums only have fakes and still charge you a fortune to visit.

For me the stars will trade places during the daytime and put the constellations back in order each night. I’ll make sure there are advent calendars for the month of June so I can pretend Jesus Christ liked to celebrate his half-birthday. I’ll believe Midas’ touch made fool’s gold because that hadn’t been discovered yet. And I’ll add a sentence to the Bible saying, “...and I won’t be speaking with you for a little while,” so we can know God keeps his word.

I think about the snow that melted and how it took the whole world with it. In my new world when the water flows inevitably into the great oceans it will take the old world with it too, so that somewhere beneath the waves and currents are all of the things just as they were.