many great waters fell from heaven

Albrecht Dürer - Dream Vision (Apocalyptic Dream) (watercolor on paper) 1525

"In 1525, during the night between Wednesday and Thursday after Whitsuntide, I had this vision in my sleep, and saw how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the ground about four miles away from me with such a terrible force, enormous noise and splashing that it drowned the entire countryside. I was so greatly shocked at this that I awoke before the cloudburst. And the ensuing downpour was huge. Some of the waters fell some distance away and some close by. And they came from such a height that they seemed to fall at an equally slow pace. But the very first water that hit the ground so suddenly had fallen at such velocity, and was accompanied by wind and roaring so frightening, that when I awoke my whole body trembled and I could not recover for a long time. When I arose in the morning, I painted the above as I had seen it. May the Lord turn all things to the best."

Race and Apocalypse: Two Scenarios

Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz and a still from Zombie Flesh Eater

The following is a excerpt from page 231 (of 259 total) of Colson Whitehead's book, Zone One. In this book a plague that turns humans into zombies has taken over the globe. The zombies are referred to in the book as stragglers (who are undead, but don't move) or skels/skeletons (zombies who move, bite, and spread the virus). The dialog here is between two characters (Mark Spitz and Gary) who are clearing any left-over skels or stragglers in a "Zone" of Manhattan. Gary has just been bitten and subsequently given a large dosage of pills and morphine. Mark Spitz is keeping him conscious by re-telling the story of his nickname.

... People were becoming less than people everywhere, he had thought: monsters, soup.
     Seven Gold metals? Eight? Here was one of the subordinate ironies in the nickname: He was anything but an Olympian. The medals awarded to Mark Spitz were stamped from discarded slang. Mark Spitz explained the reference of his sobriquet to Gary, adding, "Plus the black-people-can't-swim thing."
     "They can't? You can't?"
     "I can. A lot of us can. Could. It's a stereotype."
     "I hadn't heard that. But you have to learn how to swim some-time."
     "I tread water perfectly."
     He found it unlikely that Gary was not in ownership of a master list of racial, gender, and religious stereotypes, cross-indexed with corresponding punch lines as well as meta-textual dissection of those punch lines, but he did not press his friend. Chalk it up to morphine. There was a single Us now, reviling a single Them. Would the old bigotries be reborn as well, when they cleared out this Zone, and the next, and so on, and they were packed together again, tight and suffocating on top of each other? Or was that particular bramble of animosities, fears, and envies impossible to recreate? If they could bring back paperwork, Mark Spitz thought, they could certainly reanimate prejudice, parking tickets, and reruns.
     There were plenty of things in the world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked.

This is the first mention of race, or racism, in the book.

- - - - -

And, this text is lifted from a post (by user JIR) on SurvivalBlog.com. It addresses the idea of the "unwashed masses", otherwise known as the Golden Hoard, who will flow from urban centers en-masse once the apocalypse strikes and modern amenities (food distribution, electricity, waste management, etc) are cut-off. "Originally the Golden Horde referred to the Mongol Armies of the 13th century that conquered territories from Northeast Asia to Eastern Europe to Siberia to the Black Sea. They eventually controlled over 2.3 million square miles. They were known for vicious raids and sometimes complete massacres of civilian populations." (Preppingtosurvive.com)

I agree completely with you on relocation to safer areas and stocking a remote retreat in the hinter-boonies. That’s the optimum solution and in worst case situations, it’s really the only solution likely to work long term. Any of your readers stuck in less than optimum situations are going to make a valiant effort to survive, but their odds are not as good. I am one of these folks. I worry about the golden hoard more than anything else. I would like to pass on some thoughts on the subject of what the unwashed masses will be doing after TEOTWAWKI [The End of the World as we Know It].

This quote doesn't overtly address race, but it does attend to prejudices of urban versus rural peoples. And, as Mark Dery (author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams) has pointed out, descriptive terms for people, such as hoard, "sheeple", unwashed masses, Mongols, and urban, used on these blogs by mostly white and male survivalists point in the direction of discrimination against the other.

- - - - -

When I had my on-campus interview at Rollins College I met with a couple representatives from the Diversity Committee. The asked me about how diversity played into my pedagogy, which was no problem for me, but I didn't have any answer for how diversity was addressed in my research and artwork. To paraphrase, one of the interviewers said that not only white people are effected by climate change and/or the possible "EOTWAWKI". 

These two apocalyptic scenarios, one fictional and one anticipated, paint different pictures of what race dynamics post-disaster could mean for humanity. In one racial tensions seem to have subsided in the face of "the end". In the other, people seem to be planning an impending scourge of urban flight. This is a topic I will explore more for my work. 

- - - - -

from page 72 of World War Z, by Max Brooks

- - - - -

cursed crew from Pirates of the Caribbean, under water and moonlight

- - - - -

underwater zombie from Shock Waves

dead lakes

4/30/14
Dead lakes (are not new)

5/1/14
mummified squirrel (inside some human thing)
locust
hot sky quivers

5/3/14

when it rains it pours

Hunger Games billboard on the green line Morgan St. CTA platform

* * * * *

Smoke

Hummingbirds make explosions in the dying white flowers—not only the white flowers are dying but old women are falling from branches everywhere—in smoking pits outside the city, other dead things, too, are burning—and what can be done? Few people know. Dogs have been lost in more than one place, and their owners do not love the Countryside anymore. No—old women have fallen and lie with their cancerous cheeks among the roots of oak trees. Everywhere, everywhere. And the earth is sprouting things we do not dare look at. And the smoking pits have consumed other unnamable things, things we are glad to see go. The smoke, tall and thick as mountains, makes our landscape. There are no more mountains. Long ago they were gone, not even in the memory of our grandfathers. The cloud, low over our heads, is our sky. It has been a long age since anyone saw a sky, saw anything blue. The fog is our velvet, our armchair, our bed. The trees are purple in it. The candles of flowers are out now. The fog is soft, it has no claws, not yet. Our grandmothers’ purple teeth crave. They crave things we would not even recognize anymore, though our grandmothers remember—they cry out at a bridge. Too many things to name are gone and we are left with this clowning earth, these cynical trees— shadows, all, of themselves. And we, too, are beyond help. Some only are less cancerous than others, that is all, some have more left, of their bones, of their hair, of their organs. Who can find a way around the smoking pits, the greedy oaks? Who can find a path to take among the lost and dying dogs back to where the hummingbirds, though mad, still explode the flowers, flowers still though dying?

-Lydia Davis, from "Almost No Memory", 1997

* * * * *

11/27/13

too far silly

11/28/13

pot of gold

pennies stuck in the fencing of a CTA platform

11/30/13

"she was blond and ironed"

Reebok brand cross-fit tractor tire

Michelin\Reebok cross-fit shoe

-

loving what you do is not a reason to be paid less than what your labor is worth (!)

12/1/13

 "off the bone"

"... the clock answers my questions about the time very well..." (from Examples of Confusion by Lydia Davis)

the},r (Google drive image/text conversion error for Smoke)

 

parts of the murals in El Taco Veloz, Chicago

o_0

"the apocalypse is coming, and SOON"

The Man Comes Around (prep)

names

blame

same

down

around

up

sup

cup

ground

around

pipers

signin'

kettledrum

cryin'

dyin'

come

tree

wick

tree

pricks

shalom

home

throne

crowns

around

still

still

still

down

around

pipers

signin'

kettledrum

cryin'

dyin'

come

tree

wick

tree

pricks

pound

around

Adam Farcus - Scare Eyes (collage) 2011 

[preparatory collage and color scheme for a sculpture. also, reference to the title and words above]

On the road beside it, BLOOD.

    FADE IN:

1    EXT. THE EMPTY STREET OF A CITY - DAY

No people. A FEW CARS AND TRUCKS are parked at odd angles, abandoned.
A TITLE FADES IN, one phrase at a time.

FIVE YEARS...
SINCE THE DEAD FIRST WALKED.

2    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

We hear THE SOUND OF A STRONG WIND. DEBRIS flutters through the streets. A LARGE ALLIGATOR slithers into frame, stops and looks around.

MONTAGE: as MORE GATORS explore the empty streets, knocking over GARBAGE CANS, upsetting the MANNEQUINS in A DEPARTMENT STORE WINDOW. A GATOR crawls out through the open doors of AN ABANDONED BANK. LOOSE BILLS are dragged along under the animal's tail. They flutter away on the WIND.

3    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

GATORS crawl over A '79 CADELLIC. A FEMALE SKELETON sits slumped over the steering wheel. In the back a BABY'S BONES are strapped into AN INFANT'S SAFETY SEAT. One of the gators THUMPS its tail maddeningly against the windshield. ANOTHER TITLE APPEAR:

FLORIDA - 1987

4    EXT. THE CITY - DAY

CLOSE ON A SECTION OF PAVEMENT as we hear THE SOUND OF SLUGGISH FOOTSTEPS approaching. A SHADOW appears at the bottom of the frame. It gets longer and takes on the shape of a man.

TIGHT ON THE AFTERNOON SUN, blinding us. Into the FOREGROUND lurches THE FIGURE which cast the shadow. Glare obscures all facial detail until the head jogs into position directly in front of the fiery ball in the sky. Then we see its hideous, dead eyes, its blue-grey colour, the blackened wound where a large portion of jaw has been ripped away. This is a ZOMBIE! A MUSIC CHORD SOUNDS and THE MAIN TITLE
APPEARS:

DAY OF THE DEAD
 

28 Weeks Later script