Hiya, friends. It's been over a year since I've posted anything here and . . . I know. It's bad. It's real bad. I've been busy, but I have no excuse for letting my blog lapse for a damned year. It's reprehensible. Please enjoy an essay I wrote in college about the end of the world.
Look, I'm no mystic. I don't buy into portents and potions or
psychics and spirits. Nostradamus was a primitive John Edward, delivering to
his audience a bunch of hokey hocus and cold-reading rhetoric, having no more "vision"
than a sun-blinded bat. I'm pretty open-minded on most issues, and I certainly
subscribe to the preternatural world (you'd have to be a jerk not to), but let's
be realistic about it. There are things that exist outside the human realm of
experience – a new species, for example, is discovered on our planet virtually
every day – but you have to draw the line somewhere.
My motto
is this: if it's tangible, it's possible. Faith? Faith is like rhythm –
you either have it or you don't. It can be learned, but then it takes on a
certain awkwardness and the learner never quite dances just right. It's simply
not natural.
But something happened one night that stirred my tenuous faith.
May, 1997. It rained that morning. I woke to it pattering against
the window above my bed. Nice way to wake up. I showered, washed my grunge-rocker hair, dressed, and went about my
day. But something was growing. A feeling. A premonition, maybe, as
I came to believe. Something was wrong. But isn't that the understatement of
the century? Something was horribly, hideously, fatally off beam. As that
spring day in 1998 wore on, a nameless, sickening dread
blossomed in my mind like some poisonous flower. I tried uselessly to ignore it.
At work, I smiled at customers and bid them come again. I half-expected one to morph into a disfigured creature and
begin pillaging the store and its patrons. But none did. That nameless dread
just continued to unfurl until its noxious pollination threatened to suffocate
me.
That evening, after band practice, I retired to my room and
strummed my acoustic guitar in hopes of clearing my head. I listened through the wall to
Rob, my friend and bandmate, negotiate a date for Friday with a nice
young woman he'd met at a show. Jared, the singer, was uncharacteristically
quiet, staring at the evening news without so much as blinking. I decided to
take a walk to clear my head. Jared called for me to wait up and asked if he
could tag along.
It was not my intention to tell him anything about the feeling I'd been wrestling all day for fear he'd think me
senseless. Or perhaps I was worried that he may think me a new subscriber
to the world of the occult and thus would label me "new age-y." But he remained reticent and reflective on that long-ago night walk. We
mumbled a few banalities. We watched the sidewalk slip beneath our
feet. The stars revolved and the trees shook and the smell of rain rinsed the wind.
Eventually, the conversation broke when I stopped and said, "Hey, man. Do you feel that?"
And he said, "Yeah." Because the dread had infected him as well.
Someone died. Or perhaps an Antichrist was born. I didn't have the barest hint of what it could have been, only that something large and
terrible had happened. Was happening. A tipping point had been reached. I sensed it the way a stallion senses the
approaching tempest and stomps a helpless hoof in reply. Somewhere,
something had tipped and Jared and I both felt it.
April, 1996. It really began with the dreams, I suppose. Nightmares
pulsing with the vividness of summer dawn were nightly born behind my eyes. These
monstrous displays could not be tethered to mere invention on my behalf – I did
not sire them. They were sent. I know this as I know my middle name replicates
my father's first.
These were warnings. Must have been. Never before or since
have my dreams crackled with such surging energy. They were
living things. I can recall each sliver of detail down to the final agonized
scream. I could not bear to relate them here outside of a few brief glimpses; nor
would I expect you, reader, to shoulder their weight (though one day you may have no
choice). Suffice to know that they were apocalyptic in nature. Global ruination.
Our demise will not come about by the wreckage of war or the demolition ball of
a marauding meteor; it comes about through . . .
. . . an
explosion. Somewhere, far to the south, something blows sky high. My hair is
cropped close to the skull, and saturated with sweat. I am stalking through the
remains of a building, gutted by some long-gone fire. The walls are scorched
and smell of cordite. The ceiling has caved in and the sky outside is purple-tinged.
I am carrying an assault rifle. Though I've never touched one before in the waking world, I know
how to use it here. I breathe soot. Somewhere behind me issue the calls of men in
pursuit. I am hunted.
Weaving
through the labyrinthine corridors, I find myself at a dead end. No exit,
except the way I came – which is, of course, blocked. In the center of the room
sits a young girl on a folding chair. She is crying. When she sees me, she gains her feet and,
sobbing, wobbles forward. She stretches out her arms, seeking comfort I cannot
offer.
"I
want my mommy," she whispers, sniffling.
I tell her
I can't help her.
"I
want my mommy!"
I tell her
to hush and shoot a glance toward the dimming corridor where the hunters draw near.
"I
want my MOMMY!" the child shrieks and before I know what I'm doing, I
shoulder the rifle and trigger off a volley. Fire spits from the muzzle. Shell casings bounce at my feet. The girl is lifted from the force and tossed
against the wall before crumpling to a pile of rags.
Sickened, I
peer wildly around. There are only shadows, and shadows upon shadows. There is
only the lingering ghost of damnation. I start back the way I came, seeking an exit, but knowing it
is useless.
And then I hear it.
"I
want my mommy," the voice chokes. It is calmer now, but drowned. I turn,
and the gun drops from nerveless fingers. The girl is renegotiating her feet. She
is not dead, though her hair is now a straw mat of blood and her face is gone. "I
want my mommy," she says again and takes a tentative step toward me,
stretching her arms in embrace.
According to the
latest reports, America's population has now topped 318 million. China and India
What happens, according to these visions, is this: humanity's
growth accelerates so rapidly that resources are soon exhausted. We need more
food to support more people, but we now have require so much housing that
habitable structures are built on the only land left available – the rich soil
needed to raise our foodstock. Essentially, we choke off our food supply with
housing. And then it happens: total collapse. People outnumber usable
resources, equaling mass famine, disease, rioting. It's ugly. And I
already see its precursors. They're everywhere. Two hundred acres of cornfield
near my in-laws were paved over last year to put up a subdivision. A local forest
was leveled in favor of a shopping mall. We're burning ourselves
out and, for some reason, I was allowed a sampling of the end result.
There is a
lake with a car sinking into it. The car is red, compact. It belongs to my
friend Jared, and he is still inside. He does not move. He is not singing now; he
is smiling. The captain, going down with the ship. He remains oblivious to my
frantic screams to save himself. He doesn't care, because everyone is going
down with the ship. The big cabin cruiser S.S. Earth is capsizing and no amount
of bailing will save its passengers now.
As the
radio aerial slips beneath the surface, I watch the concentric rings of water
ripple out and away, a fading bulls-eye. For a time, I watch the surface where
that target floated, willing my friend to rise. Willing him to change his mind
and rejoin me in what is left of this world. But he does not, and I flee this
tortured gravesite scrubbing a hand through my devastated hair.
After the dreams, I vowed never to cut my hair. Since all these
visions displayed me sans ponytail, I
figured that if I kept my hair long indefinitely, none of these terrors would
befall the world. What psychiatrists would, I suppose, label rationalization. But maybe I was like
Samson. Just maybe I carried not only my strength, but the strength of the
world in the winding strands of hair. If I preserved it, I could
preserve the world; save it from the suffering I knew was coming.
Like Samson, though, I lost the hair
because of a girl. Her name was not Delilah and she did not wield the shears. After
an arduous breakup, she began dating a rival. Out of a desperate need for
change, I cut the hair off (pathetic, I know, but I was but a young lad then). In my defense, the fate of the world was the
farthest thing from my mind that winter; I didn't give it a single passing
thought as I trooped into the barbershop. So, if these portents
ever emerge, you may blame the destruction of the world on a woman whose name
is not Delilah.
The
city is all but empty. Winds hush down vacant alleys. Automobiles rust along the
curbs. It is dark, except for certain places where the few remaining
inhabitants have scrounged generators to light the quiet places of this
necropolis. At the top of a skyscraper, I survey what remains. On the wall of
the penthouse, someone has scrawled a message in mud or blood or excrement: ALL
DEAD HERE.
But not all.
Boots
scrape on the rust-flaked fire escape. Still they pursue me, though now I am
unarmed. The breeze stirs their voices away and riffles the hood covering my scalp.
I pick my way down
the opposing side. When I reach the ground, a cat with a torn ear hisses from an overturned garbage can. I flee into the streets of a city acrawl
with silence.
I'm aware this all sounds like an enormous load of bunk. Hell, for all I know it is. I'm no
scientist. Humanity's not about to collapse under its own weight. Mother Nature
won't retaliate by striking down two-thirds of the world population. Global
warming's a myth devised by men in suits to keep us subservient. AIDS has been
contained. The Greenhouse Effect is certainly not melting the ice caps and the
world is definitely not lorded over by a shadow government. It's all
scaremongering, propaganda, new age-y rubbish. Dreams are dreams and mean
nothing beyond their surface luster. The exploding population is by no means
an issue worthy of attention and strength is not carried in locks of hair. As
long as we're all comfortable in our two-bedroom homes, eating our sushi,
raising our 2.5 kids, and taking our puggles out for walks, we'll be okay. Right?
It's not a
prison cell, really. It's a prison suite. A fire snap-crackle-pops on an
antique hearth. A queen-sized bed with a down comforter sprawls in the corner. There
is a television and a radio (both worthless because there is nothing now to
broadcast), and a desk with a candle where I can write.
I'm not sure why I'm in custody; the days of Miranda are long gone. I'm to be
tried sometime in the near future and a guilty verdict will undoubtedly lead to
execution. I kneel on the woven rug before the fireplace and peer into its
depths as if the flames will hold answers. As if anything holds any answers.
The door unlatches and my hood stirs in the breeze from the corridor and I
stand to meet my fate.
"Aaron,"
says a voice, familiar. It is Rob, whom I believed dead, victim to the initial
catastrophe which claimed so many lives. He has joined the other side (whatever
that side may represent), and has traded in his drums for an assault rifle. Rob
and I embrace, then he stands aside to let me pass. He has come not to kill me
but to free me. The corridor leads to an exit and I take it, out, into the
night.
We all still have an exit, I'm sure, though I don't know if we'll
have a friendly steward to open it for us. We'll have to open it ourselves. We
needn't blindly fumble for the latch. We need merely open our eyes and see.
Which is what I'm attempting. Since that night those years ago,
when I felt the nauseous dread of something nefariously awry, I've come to understand we
are doomed unless we do something to initiate a reversal. Our ship is sinking
and we are all unwilling captains.
I've gone so far as to try to grow my hair out again, but it doesn't
seem to work. It's thinner now, and weaker. Or maybe it's the stuff its rooted
in that is not conducive to growth. Perhaps the brain has grown soft and
clayey, porous and silty, no longer rich with the topsoil of thought and
ambition. Perhaps all it can do now is grow dreams that disguise themselves as
visions and visions that disguise themselves as dreams.
And speaking of dreams, I'll leave you now with a final sample. The
last of those pseudo-prophetic reveries that plagued me all those years ago:
On the bank
of a river, far from any vestige of humanity, I watch the water whirl south in
spits and eddies. A reflection appears over my shoulder and I turn, startled,
certain my relentless pursuers must have at last caught up with me despite Rob's
head start. However, though this newcomer walks upright, he is not a pursuer
(or even human). It is a dog. Its legs have evolved to hold its entire form
erect, and it seems particularly proud of this achievement. Its center of
gravity has shifted. It wears a purple cloak and a leering grin. I get no sense
of danger from it. For a long while we watch one another; I swallow and it
licks its chops.
At last I
manage, "Have you come for me?"
"Mm-hm,"
it answers, its voice perhaps yet unfit for the full use of human language.
"Are
you going to help me?"
"Mm-hm,"
it replies.
"Can
you show me the way?"
"Mm-hm,"
for the third time.
And I
follow this man-dog into the woods, where, at last…
…the dreams vanish in a wisp and I am released from their
burdening yoke. So where does this leave us?
As I've said, I'm no mystic, I'm no scientist, and I'm surely no
interpreter of dreams. Who really knows what the resurrected girl, the sinking
car, the pursuit, the release from captivity, the dog speaking in indefinite
affirmations truly mean? How much
strength can hair really hold in its slim follicle? How dangerous is a population that rises
unchecked? How much damage can global
warming really do? Who knows?
I can really only glean two things from this: a) I
experienced a rash of nightmares in the spring of 1996 and b) I experienced a
bout of deep malaise a year later. Beyond that, what can I tell you? I'm no prophet.
