What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

(For those of you who are just joining us, you may want to backtrack a bit and catch up. You can click the “Who’s Todd?” link on the lower left of any “Tim’s Blog” page to read about our first meeting, and you can read through the archives to get the full story.)

(To watch a vintage clip of Thunderclap Newman performing this song, click here.)

I had just returned from a trip to “the big city”. Once again, I’d been suckered in by the cultural bait & switch. Propelled by some vague dis-ease, some unconscious goad, some still hidden belief that going into town would in some magical way heal the pain in my heart, I got in my car and headed into town. I had errands, of course, to justify the trip. But those errands could easily have waited.

What was I seeking? I’m not sure. Perhaps I would score some treasure at the thrift shop, satisfying, for the moment, some ancient foraging instinct. Perhaps I simply needed a dose of what Sally calls “the warm body effect”, that calm that comes from being surrounded by the herd. Perhaps I was just checking to see if the world had ended already, and if I had somehow missed it.

Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it. The thrift store was full of junk, the herd felt insane, and the land of box stores and four-lanes always looks like the end of the world to me. Once again I was forced to confront the fact that, whatever it is I’m looking for, it isn’t “out there”.

I stomped into my office, threw my keys on the desk, plopped down into my chair and mashed the connect button, looking for a hit of electronic love. “Connect”. Another bit of bait and switch.

A sticky popped up mid-screen: whats up dude

“Hey, Todd,” I answered. “Not much. Just got back from town.”

I know that I was there I hitched a ride in your cell phone then jumped into the car radio dude I cant believe youre still getting your tunes from a cassette deck I mean youve got all those cds and youre still listening to cassettes in your car I can get you free satellite radio you know just say the word I thought about trying to talk to you through your stereo speakers but didnt want to scare you while you were driving

“I appreciate that, Todd. I’m already a wreck on the road. After my head-on two years back, I’m on full alert from the time I turn the ignition to the time I put the car into park. And that asshole in the utility truck that’s been “trimming” trees along the road all week almost knocked us into the ditch on the way out, so I was especially prickly today.”

you ok now

I sighed and stretched my shoulders. “No, Todd, I’m not.”

whats up

“It’s really hard for me to be out in the world these days, Todd. Really hard. I see people. I see them on the road, in stores, in coffee shops. I see them mailing letters and taking their kids to school. I see them. And when I see them, I think to myself “they’ve all got plans.” And I get really sad, Todd. I get really, really sad.”

cuz you see whats coming with oil and climate and the environment and the government and all that you see whats coming and you know they dont see it and theyre all just going about their business doing their best with no idea whats about to hit them is that right

“That’s pretty much it, Todd. All those people. All those plans. It hurts, to see it. And it hurts more now than it ever has.”

whys that

“I think it’s… there’s something in the air lately, Todd. I’ve sensed it. So has Sally. So have some of my friends. There’s this new sense of urgency. This creepy feeling that Shit and Fan have been formally introduced and they’re just about to shake hands.”

Ive had that sense myself some of the articles that have come through lately I know what you mean

“Sally and I were talking about it the other day. Is it real, this new urgency? Are we right on the edge of some huge shift? Or is it just a vague dose of fear making the rounds like a summer cold? It’s difficult to tell. I remember a year or two ago, how a number of people on a listserv spoke of a sense of urgency, as if things were about to crumble catastrophically, as if the whole shebang was all coming down any minute. But it didn’t. Or at least, things didn’t crumble enough for the rubble to land in the laps of most Americans.”

so maybe its just a fear a reaction thats not necessarily tied to anything real

“It’s tempting to think that. The fear can be so hard to bear sometimes. The knowledge of what’s coming. The future. So hard to bear. But when you look at the news, as you just mentioned, you see that there are plenty of reasons to wonder whether we’re right on the cusp of TEOTWAWKI, as my friend Ted calls it.”

whats teotwawki

“The end of the world as we know it.”

cool

“I mean, look at what’s come across the radar in the last year. We’ve got record gas prices promising to rise even higher, the Saudi depletion and the global peak upon us. The housing bubble is bursting, the economy is teetering, and nations are moving to decouple from “the weakest link” (the US economy) before it pulls them into the abyss.”

“We’ve got climate stories filling major magazines. The situation is more desperate than ever, with forecasts of more and stronger hurricanes, harder droughts, deader forests, faster melting, hotter summers, hotter global mean temperatures, dwindling food supplies, dwindling water supplies. Oceans are gagging, coral reefs are failing and species continue to die at ever increasing rates. Meanwhile, we keep insisting that economies grow. Meanwhile, we continue to pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

“It can’t continue, Todd. It can’t. And it is unraveling in a time of wars and rumors of wars, a time of political corruption and outright insanity, a time when we have to stop and consider very seriously the notion that, as we attempt to navigate the collapse of global industrial civilization, our own governments may be our worst enemies.”

whew dude thats like I mean how the hell are we supposed to keep going when we hear shit like that

I reached over and opened Final Cut Pro on my editing computer. The last of the final music mixes still needed to be cut into the doc, and I wanted to get started. “Maybe that’s the point, Todd. To not keep going. I said to Sally the other day, maybe this thing we’re feeling, this thing in the air, maybe it’s because things really are about to unravel in a big way, and maybe it’s an emotional wildfire spreading through the dry tinder of our awake and grieving hearts. And maybe it’s also this: a deep body sense of exhaustion, of being tired of the bullshit, the destruction, the insanity. Maybe it’s a deep wanting for it to come to a stop, to reach the end. Maybe I’m not the only one who feels the oppressive weight and desperate futility of this culture as I drive around in it. M