secret: the apocalypse

Sometimes, to make myself feel better as I trudge my way back up the steps to my office after a slightly-too-long lunchbreak with all the young intelligent attractive people I am lucky and happy to be friends with, I imagine how my office building will look once it has been abandoned. I see parts of the stairs fallen away all together, the rest pulled apart by the stubborn, slow-moving fingers of weeds  that have wedged themselves into the cracks.

Everything will slowly rot away, I tell myself firmly. The fibres held together to form carpet will disintegrate into a slightly itchy dust. The glass of the windows will be yellowed, cracked, splinters on the floors, or gone altogether. Maybe doors and windows will be boarded up, graffitied like we see in the movies. I smile in a fond way at us humans trying to conceive of and imagine our own demise, immortalised in television, graphic novel, film. There’s always graffiti.

I suspect the way we all go is more likely to be infertility, like in Children of Men, or dead crops, like in Interstellar, or a nuclear holocaust, like in Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn. I don’t really think there’ll be zombies, even though I’d like that. I’d like evolution, Marvel Universe-esque powers, revolt and revolution. I assume I’ll be dead, bones in the ground. So I allow myself the luxury of a daydream. There’s a weird comfort in knowing that ultimately, my dislike of those stairs that I traipse up and down at least twice a day is irrelevant to the future of the planet. That time will ravage them and their torturous role in my day-to-day existence will ultimately be immaterial.

secret: the end of the world, or Day 16 of 30pictureschallenge

in Australia in summer it is inevitable that things burn. tonight, somewhere near Armidale, there is a fire- with a bit of a wind, the streets are full of smoke. on dusk, it seems as though the town is almost empty. it truly feels like a post-apocalyptic reality. me and Maude are making our slow way up the hill to home (she's too keen for second gear and not quite sharp enough to take advantage of third up these hills, i never really know what to do with her). i half expect newspapers blowing past us with headlines increasingly threatening and bleak, like the movies.

my favourite post-apocalyptic movies are those like i am legend, children of men, 28 days later or city of ember, or even the island (which might be a little bit about scarlett and ewan). the anarchist inside of me likes watching societies fall apart (it doesn't have to be a nuclear holocaust, just a good old-fashioned dissolution of the powers that be). i like seeing who takes the lead, who the scriptwriters and directors think is worthy of the power.

because i'm a feminist, i'm particularly interested in what sort of female figures our scriptwriters have imagined. it's interesting how sometimes, the roles of women don't change at all, as though that's too hard to imagine, even though when you're making stuff up you can imagine anything you like.

once upon a time, i wanted to write my honours thesis about the role of women in post-apocalyptic literature. now, i really really wish i had done it. i could go back and do it sometime, you know. i wanted to write about isobelle carmody's obernewtyn series, and margaret atwood's the handmaid's tale. even thinking about this now makes me want to write a blog a billion words long.

for now, i imagine myself roaming the world in my trusty van (who goes forever and never ever breaks down because she's old enough there are no computers in her and i can fix her with my somehow-acquired mechanical skill....). stay safe out there kids. safe from fires, safe from smoke, and safe from zombies.