Notes from the end of the world
It’s hot inside. Stuffy. No air. Fans run constantly. The smoke outside is so thick you need a special mask to even go out. In a 375-square-foot apartment, we put a good face on it and try to carry on.
The heat waves have been tough, it never cools off enough at night. Can’t open the windows for the smoke. Moments hang heavy and thick, too hot to sleep. Inner dialogue of Trump tragedy escapes like wild horses running, unstoppable. What? Obey a subpoena to testify. Who obeys any stinking laws?!@$^# Maybe I’ll stop paying my taxes, now that white collar crime is OK.
Maybe Trump will get inside the urban growth boundary…. what then?
Maybe the smoke lasts three, four, five days, no fresh air anywhere. Finally, a clear day or two, hang the laundry, open the windows at night, take a walk, glean some smoke-tainted figs, get those blankets of caustic ash off my truck and tomatoes.
The pandemic has accustomed us to isolation. Shopping, laundry, getting gas, all a risk of contagion. The internet is a way out, click, Politico, oh no, more torturous Trump insanity, just have to look, can’t help it. Blood pressure check: high. Angry. I imagine myself in a blue Union uniform, send me to the front lines. Give me some arrows for my quiver.
Thank God for basketball, but not the Lakers, again. Beat LA! It would be great to see Pat Riley’s Heat whip the Lakers, or maybe the Nuggets will take them out. We watched Jane Austen’s Persuasion; we’re still in love. There’s about only us left; everyone else is like a distant fantasy. Like naive citizens we follow state Covid guidelines, while the town is full of tourists fueling the next outbreak of cases. How many deaths today? Are we down? What’s the smoke?
Born under a bad sign: the economy, jobs, hunger, death, corruption; if it wasn’t for bad news, I wouldn’t have no news at all.
Locals battle away, same old same. One side, then the other, no one listening. If liberals of a feather can’t agree, what chance is there for the country? We’re sunk. Who cares? People just like to fight. The government has no money; no one has any money; they turned off the pipeline. Now we all slowly deflate, and then get displaced to be beaten to death by rural Trump supporters in a belligerent, opiate-driven haze.
Evicted, one by one, we wait to be shipped out to Red lands. Maybe since the liberals so easily let us go, we turn into Trump zombies; get the red hats. Start watching Fox. Let me run a cord from your house. Cable. Shut up and dribble! Give me one of them OxyContins man. Let’s snort one.
But before this tragic fall from grace, the potential for which races like a cloud of harpies over my fevered sleep, there’s still time to contemplate the Sixth Great Extinction. All those animals I loved as a kid, shunted aside as hordes of starving people grab whatever they can under a cloudless sky. SkyNet. Planet of the Apes. This is what collapse feels like. An ocean of jellyfish.
How do you spell relief? Maybe another serving of salted peanuts. The refrigerator, oh yeah, place of eternal gratification. Where is that good cheese hidden now? Stick my head in the freezer for a second to cool off. Oh no! Another public power shut off! Rolling blackouts. Can’t open the fridge. Pass go, don’t collect $200, start over again. It’s hot inside…
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