APOCALYPSE(S)

It was a weekend of films with existential ponderings, writ apocalyptic and large in one and personal and smaller (though no less significant) in the other. And it felt like "old times" when The Wife and I would watch three or four films each week (and usually at least one in a movie theater).



Don't Look Up, directed by Adam McKay. It's discovered that a planet-killing comet is approaching earth. Of course, our current culture can't quite get its act together before the end of the world. But before that happens we get to see great performances by Jennifer Lawrence as the astronomy grad student who discovers the comet and by Leonardo DiCaprio as her astrophysicist professor. The satire in this feels all too real. It tells me that we probably are indeed doomed.



The Lost Daughter, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. A professor of Italian literature in translations, played expertly by Olivia Coleman, is on vacation in Greece. But her time of relaxation and renewal is interrupted by another family and their interactions throughout the next week. All of this is complicated by the professors complicated relationship with her own daughters and her abandonment of them, as she tries to discover herself. Although this film ended with a glimmer of hope, it still felt like a long journey to possibly see it to fruition.

"END of the WORLD" READS

When I'm depressed, I find it comforting to read about the depression of others. When the world feels like its coming to an end (of sorts) then I find comfort and distraction in books about the end of the world. Here are some of my favorite "apocalyptic" book recommendations.

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Dark Matter by Aase Berg.

These short poems that collectively tell a story are almost impossible to describe. Something catastrophic has occurred and continues to happen, but everything is so off-kilter and jarring that one never quite gains one's footing. Which is okay, because, as one of the poems states: "There is no space for compromise here." Indeed, otherwise we wouldn't feel the dread and oppression that lies within.

Poems are presented on facing verso and recto pages, with the original Swedish on the former and English translations by Johannes Göransson on the latter.

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The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley.

All women have died. Only men and boys remain. Until a young man discovers strange fungi growing over the graveyard where the women are buried, and a few women "return."

There is sex and death and storytelling. There is a broken remnant of society and the rebuilding of something in its place.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Short clipped sentences as brutal and beautiful as the story they tell propel this story forward. It's a quest of sorts, with a father and son nearly alone in a world devastated by some sort of apocalyptic event. Their world is quickly shrinking in upon them as resources and resolve dwindle.

There is hope within, but just barely.

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Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer.

These three related books all take place in the same universe. Mostly.

Borne introduces us to a City ravaged by various genetically-manipulated creatures, most of them hybrids of human and animal. We follow the story of Rachel who is barely surviving as a scavenger amidst the ruin and constant threats to her own being. Until she discovers the shape-shifting Borne and acts as mother to it/him as it/he grows to maturity.

The Strange Bird takes place within the same realm, but follows the trials and tribulations of the once-human (?) Strange Bird as it/she attempts to find freedom in/from the same setting we first encounter in Borne. It's a much shorter, and, I feel, much sadder tale than that of Rachel and Borne.

Dead Astronauts explores the lives of some of the peripheral characters we encountered in Borne and/or The Strange Bird. Here they are allowed to tell their own tales, although through various alternated timelines and versions of the City. It's a wild read that I think deserves to be revisited more than once to fully comprehend.

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Blueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot.

Malaspina, a sentient glacier, is roaming North America and destroying cities. A band of survivors is trying to survive in the Puget Sound region where a replica of Manhattan is being built.

"We hadn't seen the worst, he said. We were about to enter a period of history when we would witness horrors that could only be described through metaphor. Global warming was part of it. Nuclear war was part of it. Genocide was part of it. Islamic and Christian radicalism were part of it. Overconsumption and superviruses were part of it. But they were only small parts of it. These dark days were just around the corner..." [page 304]

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Tonguecat by Peter Verhelst.

The world hard freezes and many people die. Then there is a huge thaw and the world is flooded and caked in mud. The king disappears. Motorcycle-riding rebels terrorize the city. The titan Prometheus descends to this realm and finds love amidst the chaos.

It's quite the story. I read the opening section "Strawberry Mouth" each December as winter begins.

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Apocalypse by John of Patmos.

The Revelation (of Jesus Christ) to John that provides a framework for much of the apocalyptic literature follows. A woman in the desert giving birth to a child, both pursued by a dragon. War in heaven. A new heaven and a new earth emerge from the ruins of the war between Satan and Jesus.

Signs. Symbols. Seals. Bowls. Angels. Trumpets. Famine. Pestilence. War. Death. But, ultimately, hope and resurrection.

—

The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai.

Vancouver BC more than one-hundred years from now is a city populated mostly by women and many of them mutants, some who can regrow organs in order to keep other members of their communities alive through transplants. A mutated version of the flu has wiped out most of the men. Life below is brutal and difficult, while everyone dreams of eventually escaping this world for one of the two artificial moons that orbit nearby.

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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Pandemic flu wipes out much of the population. A small traveling theater troupe visits settlements of survivors and puts on plays before moving on to the next town. Storytelling underpins the main narrative and provides another undercurrent of art, with the two tales informing one another as we learn more about the life of the main protagonist.

—

The Stand by Stephen King.

Captain Trips. The Superflu. Most of the population ends up killed by this weaponized disease that escapes its lab. The survivors find themselves drawn to either Boulder, Colorado and Mother Abagail or Las Vegas and Randall Flagg. The two groups gradually face off in a Manichaean battle between good and evil.

WRATH and FEAR

"The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs."

—page 43, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

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"All night sheetlightning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunderheads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear."

—page 49, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

BLOOD RED

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
—Revelation 6:12-13

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Clockwise from upper left: (1) filtered sun over the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve; (2) filtered sun at sunset; (3) match-and-hand "dragon" and night setting on the camera; (4) blood-red half moon at twilight.

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The sky is filled with haze from the wildfires that are devouring Eastern Washington. The sun is hazy orange throughout the day, blood-orange at dawn and dusk. The half moon is blood red. The dragon hunts in the night.

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Sometimes the world just feels apocalyptic. Sometimes it isn't even a recognizable violence. Sometimes it is quiet and still. Sometimes it seethes.

Sometimes it is less "unveiling" and more small, near-silent voice.

FROST PARK: WILDFLOWER SHADOWBOX

"Wildfire Shadowbox" by Troy's Work Table. Frost Park Chalk Off. Friday 21 August 2015.

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Eastern Washington burns. The wildfires continue to grow and devour more land. To stop the haunting I needed to put the nightmare down in chalk on concrete. So I did.

Not my best piece, but very cathartic.

IMMORTAN JOE

"Immortan Joe" by Troy's Work Table. Chalkboard chalking for Tuesday 26 May 2015. Mad Max: Fury Road warlord.

SLIT

"Slit" by Troy's Work Table. Carport chalking for Monday 25 May 2015. One of the Warboys from Mad Max: Fury Road.

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Mad Max: Fury Road was an off-the-charts rush. It was a movie unlike anything I've ever seen and I've seen The Road Warrior so many times that it's unhealthy! MM:FR is TRW squared.

Needless to say, I needed to sketch a couple of the main Warboys in chalk.

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View more of Slit and Nux HERE.

MILK FAITH

"It takes more than a milk faith to await a death before which most of the saints themselves have been and still are in dread."

—from "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague" by Martin Luther.

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I found a timely read in the wake of the fear of Ebola.

(And from 1527 even!)

CHRISTMAS

"He stood there. He felt with his thumb in the painted wood of the mantle the pinholes from tacks that had held stockings forty years ago. This is where we used to have Christmas when I was a boy. He turned and looked out at the waste of the yard. A tangle of dead lilac. The shape of a hedge. On cold winter nights when the electricity was out in a storm we would sit at the fire here, me and my sisters, doing our homework. The boy watched him. Watched shapes claiming him he could not see. We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didn't."

—page 22, The Road by Cormac McCarthy.