Disaster in Different Forms

Even if we all tried to prepare, to move cubic metres of dirt so we could hide underground, rob local stores so we could eat while others starved, the catastrophes themselves shifted too readily to be evaded for long. Such disasters came clothed in too many forms for comfort or forethought, and we instead had the fear of the impending, the preparation for the disaster, the struggle to survive, and an attempt to build a better version of the society which caused and endured the catastrophe.

Amongst those who prepared, some were certain that apocalypse would come shambling out of the dark wearing a human shape. They gathered weapons and trained with mannequins and dogs. Others thought that a few months of food could weather any crisis, so they practiced canning techniques from a former century and dehydrated vegetables and meat. Still others gathered silver and gold, or collected shovels in warehouses for the new economy. They would be ready when a better medium of exchange was declared, and they imagined thrones awaited those with the forethought to amass wealth in the form of copper wire or coins on a string.

Some tried to build communities, forgetting that sympathy and manners disappear when the food is gone, or that any who can be incited to love can turn just as quickly to hatred. For others it was a crisis of morality, religion, and emotional paucity, and they promoted hugs while their cities burned. Wide-eyed, they laboured under the delusion that they could lift human consciousness out of the muck in which it seemed destined to wallow. They presumed that such efforts would encourage the stubborn few who were beating at the gates to join them in song.

Although some scoffed at such idealists, they shared with them the faith that the oak tree could be convinced to crawl back into the acorn. Society was experiencing a speed bump, but once it passed through the momentary tunnel it would re-emerge even more robust and successful. They would be positioned to take advantage of the change, whether by food, money, drugs, land, or weapons, and some said it was their craving for the cataclysm that ensured its arrival.

Unfortunately, no revision could overturn the hold the past had over the present. Those who prepared for their anticipated end hid in holes and under bridges, ate from tins of hoarded rice, but they all shared the fantasy that the former opulence would return. No society has disappeared forever, they would plead, but they didn't understand that transformation does not automatically revert to a previous state. A black crow landing on a small bent bush changes the entire plant. Their dream about crawling into their mother earth's womb didn't mean they would be nurtured like children.

There were others, those who'd felt the hands upon their neck, who knew that a vast indifference was always poised for change. They were well aware that their wishes and hopes and fears were mere window dressing in a final act which was yet to be staged.

The paleontologists could have explained that a catastrophe's end was as hard to predict as a beginning. They could have described a million species which had held court for eons, and then disappeared, their bones littering the ground that once trembled at their step. The mothers who'd lost children could have told of an emptiness which caused their hands to clutch at someone in a crowd even though they knew they'd never touch their loved ones again. Abused children stumbling through broken lives could tell of toxic memories polluting the air of happy family occasions, of hands clumsy where they should have been sure, as they reached out to hold or be held and then pulled back from the waiting knives.

Those whose spines had been twisted by car accidents and only carelessly healed could have explained how the simple action of putting on a sock could become fraught with planning, how a momentary turn of the neck to glance across a room could have them howling on the floor. The schizophrenic, or those prone to bipolar collapses, could have pointed out that there was no hiding from the unbalanced mind. Torment is a combination of the outside turned around and pointed in; disaster leaves a mark in the eyes and on the skin.

There were as many different responses as there were calamities, and Darwin had been right that only a handful would survive the challenges. Starvation put a premium on food gathering, and the natural world was indifferent whether that was grown, stolen, or meat torn from human bones. Those who could defend against the beast could not always grow a garden, and those who'd practiced with a gun were not always prepared to take the necessary shot. Gold represented a gamble that the economic crisis would conform to human dimensions, and shovels were only as good as the economy of their need. Although evolutionarily, planning ahead could be seen to be an effective strategy, there were those who weathered that storm only to weaken and die when their immune system was undermined by lack of vitamins in the dark.

The cataclysm proved to be more complicated than expected, although on the face of it, survival was horrifyingly simple. Although slime molds, volcanos, shifting climates, currency failures, and marauders had come calling, there were no uniform responses that promised success. Some ran into the path of danger for themselves or others, some reveled in the collapse because it had leveled a field where they'd never been invited to play, but many merely struggled, despaired, triumphed, and then perished like the rest.

Even in the most public settings, there were individual losses. The mother whose children foundered, the lover torn from the grasp of their beloved, the believer losing their faith over too exacting a view of the indifferent skies, but there was also generalized destruction. Millions of nameless bodies washed in the surf in a dozen different countries, their stories unknown to those watching the television news. Numbers of dead in a battle meant to either support the effort or end the war became distant shapes in uniforms, their dreams stripped from them even as the medals were affixed.

We came to learn that the rattle of bones that represented our former neighbours and friends, which replaced the fine dish served at a restaurant or the book laboured over by the author, was the principal achievement of culture and society. More than a mere by-product, the bones were a mute testimony that the sleeve was knit with both intent and instinct, that Darwinian thought was always lurking on the edges of even the most affable dinner conversations.

Once the dross had been stripped away, and the sculptor's hand had revealed our face, we found that we shared our needs and wants with the rest of the animal kingdom. We reached for food and water first, and then shelter from the elements and our fellows. We needed safety, security from robbery, as much as we needed warmth in the howling storm. Animal hunger had resurfaced, and while some complained that it had become paramount in the daily matter of living, others would merely point over their shoulder at the burned city, the crumbled house and car, the empty bank vault, and the grease left in the pan.

We'd come home in a way, for colour of skin and worry about gender and clothing preference had disappeared. Reduced to a bag of starving meat, we ate, hid, and coupled, ran and hid to do it all again, hoping that somewhere someone was holding fast to what we'd lost, or that there were people willing and able to put it together again.