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Quite a few people have taken to saying they are living in
the apocalypse. These may be miserable times but it’s more than an exaggeration
to characterize our present situation as the apocalypse. This doesn’t look like
the end of days to me. I have developed a brief quiz to help you determine if
you are living in an apocalypse or not.
1) Do you have access to food and
potable water?
2) Do you have a safe and
sheltered place to sleep at night?
3) Have you seen a tree lately?
4) Do you have electricity in your
home?
5) Are you able to communicate
with distant loved ones using an electronic device?
6) Was your trash collected at
curbside as regularly scheduled?
7) Can you flush your toilet?
8) Have you been attacked by giant
mutant wolves?
9) Have you seen aliens in your
attic?
10) Have you noticed any dead
bodies lying about in your neighborhood?
11) Have you found yourself
interacting with a different version of yourself from another space-time
continuum?
12) Do you suspect you or someone
you know is a zombie?
I’ve made my point. Case closed.
Granted, we are experiencing a number of post-apocalyptic
scenarios that contribute to people describing this as the apocalypse. These
scenarios include 1) people dying of plague and 2) an ignorant, degenerate president
and his military bullies committing violence against our country’s own
citizenry, commonly referred to as fascism. But I wish to point out that I am
not eating acorns and dandelion greens yet. Many people have apparently mistaken
this historical moment for the apocalypse. Consider this moment as an awakening
instead. It’s a catalyst for us to think about what we cherish and want to
fully appreciate in case the systems do fully collapse and humans vanish from
Earth in massive numbers, or entirely. Consider this a moment of reckoning, to
motivate us to make the changes necessary to avert an apocalyptic full
collapse.
Some days as I swim to consciousness from sleep, I wonder
what planet I’m on. After six months of only seeing one another on screenchat,
my three-year-old grandson and I finally, joyfully, saw one another in person
when my husband and I drove (taking precautions en route) from California to
Oregon for a recent visit. When we arrived at my grandson’s house, we emerged
from the car and walked over to him in the front yard. He looked us up and down
and asked, “How did you come to Earth?” While I can’t truly know what he meant
by that or what he perceived in his toddler mind, I imagine he wondered how we
got out of the computer and landed in his yard in flesh and blood. I replied “Greetings Earthling.” While I might wish I could go home to a different
planet, I remain deeply earthbound in a vulnerable human body.
This virus has laid us humans low, but it has not killed all
of us off, and our systems still work even if not as well as they once did.
Many of our systems, such as the healthcare system and the economic system
(that has resulted in egregious income inequality), never did work. But a full systems
collapse of the magnitude of an apocalypse has not happened. It may feel like
an apocalypse to people at ground zero of the pandemic. But, face it, we know well
that a full-on apocalypse would be exponentially worse than this.
This not-apocalypse simply poses new challenges and requires
that people learn to adapt, and, dare I suggest, use their creativity. Humans
need to care, think, innovate, and imagine. We need to rise to the occasion. We
need to change. Americans don’t have a good track record when it comes to these
kinds of things. The inconveniences, challenges, and tragedies of the present
situation do not an apocalypse make. For example, a failed trip to the grocery
store is not apocalyptic. Yes, I am going to share this story because that is
how I wish to work through the trauma of a singularly dreadful morning food
shopping. Last week when I went to my local natural foods store, I discovered a
sign on the door informing me that they had closed because two employees had
tested positive for the coronavirus. They would remain closed until all
employees could be tested and the store could be deep cleaned. So I reluctantly
proceeded to a grocery store that carries many natural and organic products. I
don't know my way around that store, and consequently it took me a long time to
shop. I had to locate my preferred products and had to make many substitutions.
I was finally almost done shopping when I went to the restroom, and in the time
it took me to sanitize my hands, my shopping cart disappeared! After looking
for it myself for a few minutes with no luck, I spoke to an employee. Several
employees then helped me comb the store for the cart but we couldn’t find it.
If this were a real apocalypse, my cart would have been abducted by aliens or I
would discover that I had made a space-time continuum leap. In the not-apocalypse,
I had to do my shopping all over again. Two hours after I entered the store (or
perhaps two hundred years in a different space-time continuum), when I got to
the checkout stand, a store employee came over to tell me that they had just discovered
that another shopper had taken my cart, thinking it was hers. How senile was
she? My cart was fully loaded with a week’s worth of groceries. How could she
possibly mistake all the items in that cart for her own? Was she me in a
different space-time continuum? Possibly, because I never saw her. Did it seriously
take her an hour to realize it was the wrong cart? Honestly, a real apocalypse would
go unnoticed in this country because America is basically already full of
zombies.
The frustrations of my ill-fated shopping trip, caused by
the coronavirus situation, do not match the horror of a full-on apocalypse. Let’s
all take a step back and recognize that things could be considerably worse. Even
so, I’m hanging on by my fingernails until the election in the expectation that
we might have some actual leadership waiting in the wings to step up in 2021.
After four years of this mayhem, rampant ignorance, injustice, catastrophe, death,
and fascism, I’m exhausted. If an actual apocalypse occurs, I wish to go gently
in my sleep to a surprisingly marvelous afterlife with no zombies. Either that
or send me through a space-time continuum vortex to eighteenth century Scotland
with the characters in Outlander
where I will happily finish out my days drinking excellent Scotch, cooking and
baking for my favorite fictional people, spinning wool, and cultivating a
Scottish accent. Aye, I am a fan. Outlander
helps me survive the pandemic, economic meltdown, long-overdue reckoning
with racial injustice, and threat of a fascist dictatorship. Pass the whiskey.
Sláinte.
