1. Yesterday I went for a dental cleaning. I was greeted with a new hygienist, who informed me the one I'd been seeing for the last 10 years had passed away in August. She was only 46. She had a vivid personality, and was good at her job. I sat stunned through the entire cleaning, I'm afraid.
2. It reminded me that we have no guarantees, not even of the next second. An asteroid could fall from the sky. The roof of my home could give way. My heart could explode. (My doctor says I will die of heart failure long before I get dementia. This is supposed to bring me comfort.)
3. Death has chased me in my nightmares for as long as I can remember. Dead logs, dead bodies, dead animals, dead scarecrows (not that they are ever alive, of course). Decay and decomposing things. No wonder I wake up weary and seldom ready to face another day.
4. Each death diminishes me, said John Donne, or something similar, at any rate. Never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
5. I used to read and watch dystopian stories ravenously, to see how humanity might fare in various disasters. As we are now living in dystopian times, I find that I have no interest in the walking dead, the zombies who are following in a cult of fascism, the destroyers who would make what I thought a great nation into a slime pit of haves and have-nots.
6. Nor do I have any interest in vampires, who live forever, or vampire slayers, although reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while I'm on the treadmill might change my mind on that point.
7. We have not yet reached Hunger Games status here, but we're close. We are eating our young and our old, leaving the old to shuffle to their inglorious deaths while the young, left to fend for themselves, may grow up to one day lop off the heads of their parents. I daresay I won't be around to see how that turns out, but the flies may come to my grave site and tell me.
8. The store shelves are bare; I see spaces where I used to see goods. The school buses cannot run as they have no drivers. The local daily paper, which once boasted a circulation of nearly 100,000, now lists its circulation as a little over 24,000. They too are understaffed, the news goes unreported, the remains of the day are left unwritten. The whispers fly along the social media paths, the lies repeated and reported as if truths, when a truth would bite and kill were one to actually find its way into the hearts and minds of these vampiric souls who feed on distrust and dismay.
9. We are closer, perhaps, to Alas, Babylon, that fateful day when a nuclear strike would wipe out Washington D.C., and most of Virginia, along with California, Charleston, SC, and other strategic points of interest. When we reach that day, then the paper we are so fixated upon would have no value; we would instead want for simple things such as salt and fresh water. When it comes down to the basics, there will be a time when the George Washingtons are merely something to use for wallpaper.
10. Or perhaps we are nearer to Mordor, with the almighty Sauron, the evil and all-knowing eye, looking down upon the lands, eager to take them with force and place anyone not under his immediate command beneath the whip and into the mines. Not that we've much left to mine, really, but it's a good visual.
11. Goodness and mercy does not follow us all the days of our lives; perhaps it follows some charmed someone somewhere, but I don't know anyone like that. Nor do I see anyone like that in the politicians, in the entertainment industry moguls, in our sports legends. Instead I see suffering and crosses to bear, all beaten down by the paths we've chosen, or the ones society has chosen for us. Even presidents fold beneath the weight of the office, especially the golden boys.
12. I do see what appears to be a massive corporate coup; the lies that no one wants to work are revealed as such by my social media feed, where friends I trust tell me they've applied for jobs, only to be told they're over qualified. If a company needs workers, what difference does that make? When the ships aren't unloading, and the goods aren't flowing, the corporations are free to raise prices, to continue its murderous befoulment of the middle class, which it has been trying to starve out of existence for generations. Though I wonder, when we are all poor and holding out our bowls for porridge, with sad expressions of, "More, please," who will buy their pretty things? Will they then be only producing for one another, spreading their wealth from rich pocket to rich pocket? Would they perhaps then begin to eat one another, zombies of a different kind?
13. The Grim Reaper walks the world today; he's sowing seeds for his harvest of tomorrow. Whether that be by civil war or from nuclear holocaust, who can say? Whether I will die from inhaling nuclear fumes or from the sting of an insect, who can say? No one knows. Many think they know, but in the end, they know nothing. They rely only on faith, and faith is like vaporous water, a morphism that vanishes into dust in the end.
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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 726th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.
I hear you and also think the walking dead brain eaters are a metaphor. All this, and just think when Climate Change events build. I sometimes think we need to be purged. Your realism is comforting to me. I like to know people are paying attention.
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