"Days Go By"...a story

I was on a chat where the problem of how to get by if you woke up as the only likely person still on the planet. Well there may be others, but widely separated. Say out of the current 7 Billions of folks you wake up on an earth with 60,000 thousand. This scattered all over the globe.

Well first things first.

Where do they keep the antibiotics in drug stores? Also how do I get fresh water for the rest of my life. This is the sort of stuff a person would be working on. This assuming that Zombies or crazed bikers gangs don't also survive close by, and show up to ruin your day.

Water would be easy at first as the water system will run for some time. At least till the pumps, and power lasts. If you're in a region with hydroelectric you're good for a few years. Most other places only a few weeks to a month.

However before this happens you'll need to map out the water tables in your area. Wherever you finally settle down know the location of freshwater streams, and such.

One must learn to think long term,...very long term.

Your life depends on it. This is why so-called primitive folks tend to do this. End of the quarter thinking in this environment will be very fatal. So very long term planning if one wants to go on.

However,...

Profound mourning, grievous loss would be a big part of your empty world. At least at first. If one learns to live with this lonely reality the practicalities will assert itself.

A safe place to live.

Did the wildlife come through the event. If so you'll need to learn to hunt some. Eventually protection from them. Canned or dried food is only good for at most five years. You'll have to be a farmer/hunter. If you're an urbanite you'll have to learn these skills. This can be done with experience, and reading. Life in the city will be too dangerous in a year or less.

Find a cabin.

Good drainage a field of fire,...just in case. Tools seeds a root cellar all the preindustrial basics will have to be done. If you've had a basic education, and paid attention you'll know what books you need for this.
I think a very young person of the 21st century may not make it past two or three years. They wouldn't even know what questions to ask. They'll die of infection or food poisoning.
Perhaps even a predator attack.

I'd say the best survivor would be in their mid 20's to their early 50's. Before or after that it gets seriously dicey. So food water shelter.
Btw the commercial seeds will start to go bad certainly within six to ten years. This is why a medium plot farm will be your savior. You'll need to harvest not just the crops, but their seeds, and have a surplus of a year perhaps two of dried veggies or fruit.
This will be hard work. Seriously hard work, but can be done. You'll do it because you'll know your life depends on it.

Prepare for storms or other natural disasters that could wipe your homestead out.

Again take care where you decide to settle. You'll learn that a flood plain is called that for a reason. Be near a stream not a river. Those flood. Fish will be a major calorie source.
Do art. Paint draw write sing dance this will keep you both sane, and physically healthy. Me I would do one man portrayals of the classics, as well as commercials,...this especially from the 1950's. This would amuse, and center one's sanity.
Remember you are alone in this world. Except for your cats, and hunting dogs.

Our survivor might go exploring from time to time.

Maybe going to towns for new tools or perhaps items to amuse. She or he may have a classic Land Rover they keep tuned up for this. A Rover is what I'd have. A good four wheel drive all terrain ride. This could last for some years. After the gasoline no longer clicks.
A Rover can use other mixtures...so I've read.
Although one would have to know where you were, and how to get back to your homestead if you broke down. Remember there is 'no one else'. Only 'you' can save you. How long one lives will be the same as with our ancestors...dumb luck, and your hard work. If the survivor was say 26 at the time of the Event they again with "luck' could live into their 50's certainly,...that is if they wanted to.

A possible reason to go on would be company.

12 years into your farming hunting performing artistic life perhaps a change.
A hunter gatherer group might pass through the area. This unlike the marauders in the films, and books,
would be a pleasant encounter. It took all those years to stumble on your homestead because they may have started thousands of miles away.

You'll trade laugh fuck, and they'll move on.

Though now they know you're there, and they come back a few times a year as their journeys take them through the region.

In time others might show up.

Same thing.Laugh perform some plays for them trade fuck, and they move on. One day if your a guy some of these bands come back with your daughters, and sons to visit.

I can see a solstice meeting of clans developing every several years as your children, and grandchildren return to your homestead for the festival.
If this were me I can see myself taking my extended distant families around the farm in my aged Land Rover.
The little ones amazed having never seen a car actually running.

So humanity at least in the first post Event generations live in peace.
In the future villages towns one day city states.

Though this time we might get it right.

 "In Art News"

Harlem by, Camilio Jose Vergara.

Sez da racist fuck:

"White Barbie is Death"

Sez me:

However her friends are trying to help.

 "Bert, and Ernie Suck Cock"

What a pair. That, and they still have their rent controlled digs on the Upper West Side. Had it since it was a ghetto warzone in the late 1960's'. Them was the days.

Mind you their pals from the early days of the show was priced out. 

Nothing ethnic cleanse's like Gentrification.

Their 'hood is white as snow now. Muppets are honorary whites.

That temporary title will be like cream cheese in a Blast Furnace soon. What with Nazis in power now. Soon they'll be Queer Niggers again like me, and their former pals. However till then they're fine.

Mind you when you drop by don't pick up da soap.

These two will fuck anything in pants!

Bless their polyester stuffing.

 "Burden"

To be a burden. The very thing our dignity can't allow will never allow. When I was homeless I told no one except two friends. The rest didn't know for near a year. No family for longer than that. ...Dignity.

I was able to hide my condition. I still had my job an income insurance, and though fading,...options. I've told that whole story here over the years as informal therapy. However there were other conditions that could not be hidden.

Before my street life there was another adventure. I was caregiver for an older aunt for some years. This as her dementia tumbled on. Slowly she ceased being the loving soul I knew, and became a screaming raging unrecognizable shell.

The details you can imagine. Some of you have been there or will be. It was soul crushing. However both I, and you would do it again in a heartbeat. No matter the cost,...even now knowing the cost.

Cost.

This is the point. There was great emotional cost for me during these last 13 years. Caregiving work stress...an ugly endless labor dispute. Then homelessness.  A few years after getting my home being forcibly retired. Plus recurring illnesses. Living in relative poverty as a result of it all. That was my world. That, and now in some ways becoming a burden.
This as I had to take burdens from others once.

I weary of all this.

I'm very tired lonely often ill, and without joy. Old folks have a trail of tears few are interested in. I'm not interested in having them. I should have passed on last year, and the year before. I was supposed to, but those young doctors insisted on saving my life,...swell. So I made it thanks to them to 71,...swell.

So on this damp grey rainy early fall, but still too warm day. I whine to the world that bothers to come here.  Despite this crap I still laugh sometimes have happy dreams. I have a sister, and at least two friends that want me to stay alive.

I still have my home a few bits of stuff. Compared to millions even in this country I'm fine. As I say I'm just tired. I need a sunny day so I can go to the park. That, and one last time to Coney Island.

So here we are.

 

“…rhythmic”

I sleep in the day.

A holdover from decades of working, and composing at night.

I use navy air plugs. From aircraft carriers I imagine.

These things shut ‘everything’ out.

Everything except…The rhythmic thumps of your heart

The high pitched tone of your nervous system.

Even the noise your eye muscles make when blinking.

The sounds of your bowels.

You only hear yourself.

Even your soul in the voices echoing in your head.

Shutting the world off reminds you you’re alive.

"...cover"

In the old days we'd have Civil Defense during times of extreme danger, and confusion. Now we're on our own. This with a chaotic out of control political system a plague, and random death on the streets. If there was a Shelter for this kind of madness I'd be there right now.

When I was a kiddie in the 1950's the below sign was a common sight. Left over WW2 bomb shelter signs, and the new Fallout shelter directions.

Well we're at war again.

They should now build as many "Social Chaos Shelters" as possible. Mind,...bleeping big enough for social distancing.

So if ya just trying to get home alive. 'But then you're about to be shot dead by cops Nazi militia or just old fashioned deranged criminals, and maniacs. You can flee to them handy sites.

They should have three foot thick blast doors. Be stocked with every variety of tranquilizer, and or booze dope cake ice cream Oreos, and Den Mothers to chill us out. Teddy bears,...yeah lots of teddies down there. No radios TV or computers.

We really don't need anyone to tell us how bad it is.

We already know.

"...wasps"

'Had a bullet just miss my head on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn during the 1990's Crack Wars. It's true what George Washington said about that. Not the Crack wars...bullets.

"Fired musket rounds have the Deep Hum of Angry Wasps." It did.

I had three major drug overdoes as a kid. I died, but kept coming back. Who knows why.

On the upside. I slept outside with pals on the balcony of a skyscraper in mid-town as a youth. This while an orange full summer moon rose over the Chrysler Building behind us. There were bright green streaks of meteors as well. A night to remember.

I nearly drowned as a little boy.

The upside here is I didn't die. I remember being knocked down by a gigantic wave. Then being dragged out to sea. I saw bubbles grains of sand seaweed, and these would have been the last things I saw.

However I wasn't getting out of this that easy. Because after the sand, and sea weed came this bleeping big arm with an equally big hand attached to it.

There was one of them Army wrist watches on that arm which grabbed me, and hauled my little butt back to the beach. I think I was too freaked out to cry.

All I remember is being picked up, and I think passed on to my Mom. There was all this noise yelling I think crying.

I don't remember anything about the man that saved me.

Other than his big hairy arm, and his watch.

Mind you I've nearly bought it any number of times since. However that one stays with me. I'm here today to whine, and complain because of some neat guy with big hairy arms.

Ain't life something.

I'm now 71. Much closer to 100 than I am to 20 these days. I'm in the final reel. Bleep it. I woke up more or less this morning. I'll take it from there.

  "Interstellar"

"Join the Imperial Marines"

Visit many Worlds.

Meet Alien Races.

Then

KILL THEM!

  "Something to Look Forward To"

UFO Hunting Season Opens September First!

$50k Reward for a Grey.

$500k for a Saucer!

~My Auntie, and Me was Abducted when I was Little~

  "At the Seashore"

Cat Woman, and "Eddie" da Alien.

They're recently engaged, and on vacation from

Their film franchises.

Sez "Eddie":

"I have no idea why folks still buy the tired crap we dish out.

I suggested to Ridley that we make a Musical version.

He kicked me out of his office."

Sez Cat Woman:

"It was Eddie's sense of humor, 

and his musical taste.

He's a Penguin Café Orchestra fan.

"That, and he cooks really good Speed."

  "...radioactive"

Me dug up in the 36th century.

I don't look at all well.

I just looked at yesterday's mail. 
Besides the electric bill, and the latest New Yorker. I got another go from a Funeral outfit. 

I can get shake, and baked with my ashes shoved into some wall. That or a box dumped into a hole somewhere. 

Only to be discovered by 36th century grad students. 

These poking about the ruins of our sad empire. 
They'll mostly wonder why so many of us had bad teeth.
Radioactive bones too. All them stupid 50's atomic bomb tests, and massive sugar ingestion. 

Anyway such is this time of life.
Once they were trying to sell me stereos then crappy cars. Later life insurance now burial plots.

Me,...I know life was all shit.

I just want to be left da fuck alone.

"...sane"

Face Book is fucking demented. Eh...evil too, but it passes da time. We're mostly locked into narrow bubbles by it's algorithm. So see the same things over, and over. In my case being progressive I see endless atrocities by assorted Kluxers Nazis, and Queer bashers...what fun. That, and stupid liberals, and alleged Democrats tearing each other to shreds over minor points of correctness. Banning cancelling everything, and everyone not kissing the butt of their fucked up party line of the moment,...it keeps changing.

But I digress,...where da fuck was I?

Right, there's emotional comments from many who buy into these left, and right false narratives. However sometimes I deliberately fool the algorithm into thinking I'm sane.

Sana, but silly. I refer to the Firesign Theatre's "Giant Rat of Sumatra". See below.

After fooling FB I wasn't a Nazi Kluxer Stalinist or Black racist homophobe or Politically Correct book burning college student. I was shown interesting places.

I just found a window box garden realm. Seems this is a thing. There's a whole fandom population that cultivates discusses, and makes all manner of window box gardens,...I like it there.

There's other rational interesting, and creative stuff too...but ya has to search hard for it. Just surfing the platforms will not show you bleep. You have to tell these algorithms what you want. ...specifically. You have to think around it, and fool it into showing you other worlds. I most go to a bunch of off culture war topic non-insane sites to tell the A.I. my interests have changed...it does the rest.

Such is life here in da future.

 

"...swayback"

Except for the sun visor this is exactly my Dad's car. A 1950 swayback Buick. On a Saturday afternoon in Summer he'd pile all of us kids plus any of our pals from the block that were on our stoop at the moment into that beauty.

My Mom for a time called it the "Black Beauty".

We'd the lot of us be packed in there windows open laughing hollering, and Dad would drive us to Coney Island! Rides Ice Cream Hot Dawgs the works. My Dad was a very kind man. He, and Ma I later learned were deliberately giving us happy memories. These to sustain us in our coming lives.

"...not surprised"

 

"Another Time Shift Story" (This from my temporal stories of a few years ago.)

I set my dark matter pocket watch. A gust of wind a neon shimmer and,...it's August 23rd 1961. Brooklyn.

A Brownstone. I ring the bell my mother opens the door. 57 years separate us, but she knows who I am. I spend an afternoon,...home.

I'm careful not to disturb the time stream so tell her little of the future. Well other than we had, past tense for me, a Negro President. That, and we have or will have robots driving around Mars.

She's not surprised.

I'm introduced to my sister, and brother, still children, as a distant cousin of hers. I'm not there. I chose or will chose a time I wont be present. My dad is at work.

I help her make dinner. She tells me of an upcoming wedding. One which for me is 57 years old, and now with grand children.

I tell my mother I never married. She said she didn't think I would. She told me she knows I'm "different". We laugh.

"...sweaty"

I just read about the internet,...on da internet. How it's now a tool of Satan. See action above. My solution? Besides trials. Scrap the whole evil mess, and go back to writing letters ranting on the street, and mimeographing broadsides. I've done it. It's good honest work. It was not only more fun, but people actually read your deranged sweaty crap, and thought about it too.

"...fireballs"

One of the neat things about being an elder is not giving a fuck, and doing stuff ya always wanted. That, and everyone being okay with it,...within reason. I mean I ain't climbing the damned Empire State Building with Roman candles sticking out my butt shooting bright orange fireballs. Tho' there's something to consider. Being older is to stop worrying,...mostly. There I feel better now.

 

"...we're all set"

 

A TV set,...a radio set stereo-set. The term lived for over a century. They began with 19th century telegraph sets as in set ups. I played with a Scrabble Set. There were no 1970's 8-Track sets. There were Cassette decks, but no sets. Certainly no VCR sets. I think the term "Set" vanished in the late 1960's.

What would things be now?

Would you buy an iPhone Set a Flat screen or a Virtual Reality-Set?

See 1940's table Radio Set below,...which I remember using.

A little story about my first radio set.

It was a 1942 small "Zenith". 'Made of plywood which was really new, and cool in the 40's. Anyway this was about 1963 or so I'm around 12. My Aunt Sybil gave me her old radio set.

Above is a near spitting image. Thanks Aunt Sybil.

I cleaned the housing. Put fresh varnish on it. Cleaned the electrics rack replaced the old tubes. They still sold radio tubes then. That, and she was in business. She played Motown, and the Beatles with some of her 1940's tubes still working.

 

"...Long term project"

Heatwave at the Royal Sydneyland shipyard. I just tinkered with my still unfinished HMS Iron Duke kit,...or if you will. "...Set". The image is from near eight months ago. This happens now. Like that cathedral model I'm still sometimes working on,...remember that one? Anyway like the real things battleships, and cathedrals take time. 

Mind you when I was a kid I'd have knocked out both in a few weeks tops.

These days one considers the nuances of the project. 

The morality, and values of the time the original existed in. Yeah right. That's lame bullshit for me never getting around to finishing stuff. So I'm working on *His Majesties' Ship Iron Duke again,...or thinking about it at least. I did paint a few more bits. *...and it was "His Majesties" back then. No offense to QE-II. Stand by for future signals.

"...Vintage"

This from the Great Carousel Barn on the Coney Island Boardwalk. This carved horse is everyone's favorite, but ya can't ride it. She's an original "1901". Dedicated to Civil War Vets. Many of whom were still very much around when she was first installed. 

We have to make do with the others. 

Nice, and almost as vintage.

"...bucket"

 

It was July 4th two hours ago, and now September is in our faces. With it comes "Labor Day" the "official" end of Summer. Granted summer doesn't really end till September 21st, but ya see what I'm saying.

When you're young a year seems like ten years now it's about a half hour. You watch it'll be Christmas in two weeks.
Been a hell of a ride.

I've been considering my "Bucket List". Stuff I mean to do while I have any time left. Well first what scary stuff have I already done. I was in a police raid of a Gay Bar as a kid. I had lunch a number of times on the ledge of the 96th floor of the Empire State Building back when I was a transmitter engineer.

I dangled my feet over the edge while eating Arbie's pastrami.

Went to a Nude beach with pals for a few summers. Was in a race riot, and had a car explode near me. The fire ball went on forever! Been to any number of "Be-In" events. Ask ya hippy grandma what that was. I helped talk a co-worker out of suicide. A year later was talked out of same by others.

Had a bullet just miss my head on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn during the 1990's Crack Wars. It's true what George Washington said about that. Not the Crack wars...bullets.

"Fired musket rounds have the Deep Hum of Angry Wasps."

It did.

I slept outside with pals on the balcony of a skyscraper in mid-town as a youth. This while a full summer moon rose over the Chrysler Building behind us. There were the green streaks of meteors as well. A night to remember indeed.

Overdosed on narcotics on three different occasions in my late 30's. Died three times because of it. Foolishly came back each time.

I nearly drowned as a little boy.

I remember being knocked down by a gigantic wave. Then being dragged out to sea. I saw bubbles grains of sand seaweed, and that would have been the last thing I saw.

However I wasn't getting out of this "job" that easy. Because after the sand, and sea weed came this bleeping big arm with an equally big hand attached to it.

There was one of them Army wrist watches on that arm which grabbed me, and hauled my little butt back to the beach. I think I was too freaked out to cry.

All I remember is being picked up hauled back up, and I think passed on to my Mom. There was all this noise yelling I think crying...my Mom I guess. I don't remember anything about the man that saved me.

Other than his big hairy arm, and his watch.

Mind you I've nearly bought it any number of times since. However that one stays with me. I'm here today to whine, and complain because of some neat guy with big hairy arms.

Ain't life something.

As for that "Bucket List"...the British Museum Paris Disney World, and Santa's Work Shop are on it for sure. Other stuff too, but ya know.

Since you're here there's something else on my mind.

This country would be better off certainly more Just, and sane if it were smaller. Say seven or eight states. Yeah that makes sense. New England, and a few others...maybe up to Pennsylvania.

....that sounds right.

The rest of them "Murakans" can drink heavily praise jebus burn books beat'n starve their children abuse their wives, and shoot each other as they do so well, and often.

Meanwhile we'll just harvest maple syrup have community feasts sing songs do stupid plays, and write bad poetry.

I like it.

Oh,...the Vermont New York, and Maine Air National Guard keep all their Phantoms, and F-16's/18's, and AWACS along with that stash of nukes the feds hide in New Hampshire.

We may be Hippies, but we ain't stupid.

( Life goes on. Just ask our old pal Godzilla as he paints his new digs in Queens.)