"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.