It's very difficult to photograph the end of a world.

[resolute]

It's very difficult to photograph the end of a world.

I've been trying all day to get photos of the toxic, unbreathable air. It's hard to photograph haze. At least, it's hard for me. the entire image just looks a little bit washed out. I can't really show you that the light is wrong.

The light is wrong. But not in that familiar "A thunderstorm is coming, maybe a tornado, better get to shelter" way the light can be wrong. No, this is just a yellow smear over everything.

The sunlight streaming in the windows shows in an orange square on the floor. Taking a photo doesn't show you anything. It just looks like sunset.

Except, it's not sunset.

I grew up knowing that I would not live to see age thirty. I knew that the world would end, nuclear annihilation style. I knew that I would not survive it because I lived in a series of major cities. All the schoolchildren I overheard talking in class, we all knew (in that way some kids have of just loving the SHIT out of a gory detail) that we lived in first-, or second- at most, strike targets.

The apocalypse of my childhood was one I never worried about surviving.

But the end of the world I grew up in is here, and many, many, many of us -- probably most of us -- are going to live through it.

I am excited -- mostly excited? Also terrified? -- about the world that comes next. I have such grindingly stubborn hope for the future, I'm embarrassed about this hope I have. I can't talk about it, can't describe it, without all the feelings from the Feelings Oubliette leaking out. And there my feelings come out of my eyeballs, and that's just tedious. But I have enormous hope for the next world.

I hope I live long enough to see it, to exist in that next world. The one we build that corrects some of the mistakes of the world just previous. Yes, obviously new mistakes will be made. You can't build a world without breaking a few eggs, isn't that the saying?

It's just, I'm looking out of my windows at the unbreathable air, and we're going to go pick up our eldest when his work shift is done because we don't think it's safe for him to bike home in this, especially after he's worked outdoors for over ten hours today, it's just that I think about my kid and every dystopian fictional media in which the disregarded and discarded workers draw bandanas over their faces to reduce the amount of poison they breathe, and that's my kid, you understand? That's my fucking kid.

I cannot take a picture that will show you how this feels.

The world I grew up in ended. This middle part is a different world. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Comments

[talkswithwind]

It was a month and a half ago when I walked into my office in the morning and the sun pool on the floor was too orange. I darted to the window to look out, and it was too orange out there too. I swore, "It's too early for this shit," and I meant it. This is the apocalypse I was promised, but the dusty aftermath not the firey shock.

[pameladean]

I went out to the porch to carefully, slowly, with a mask on, bring in the grocery delivery. A bird flew by, I glanced up, and right in my field of view was a dull red circle. I looked away at once, but not by reflex, just because I knew it was still dangerous to stare right at the sun. With the real sun, it would have been like jerking your hand back from a hot surface.

P.

[yatima]

I love how you write about this, and I love you, and I am so grateful to have you as a companion here at the end of a world.