The Zombie Apocalypse is Here.

 

Photo Credit: eMMe

Zombie Apocalypse movies are prophecies and people behave like scavengers during a global pandemic. 

Yeah, I know, not all people...though on days like today, there's a great deal of evidence that implies otherwise.

Most readers don't know me. It's one of the reasons I write on this blog and Twitter....snark-filled anonymity. But right now, I'm almost longing for Facebook. Not enough to go back, it's just with this story I wish Bloggerville knew me well enough to know I am not a bull-shitter.

This happened.

And unfortunately, it's not accompanied with a video.

Backstory: I'm a mask-wearer. I closed a manual therapy practice in March 2020 so as not to harm clients. I reopened for a few sessions that summer and closed again as soon as fall hit. I believe in science...and facts. I spend most of my emptied calendar wishing for daylight and the better times I believe most of us wish for. I want all people to live in good health—mentally, situationally, and physically. This morning, I faced a whole lot of people who don't have the same want, they actually have the opposite want for others and for themselves. The experience was what it might've been like to be a rescuer arriving in Jonestown and unable to stop those cultists from drinking the poisoned Kool-Aide. A witness to a level of insanity that generally, pre-Covid-19, seemed to be a rare collective-occurrence.

This morning, I need to collect a wine order....you know....lockdown survival necessaries. This store usually has curbside pick-up available, but not today. It is early, the order is pre-paid and waiting for me right inside the entry, so I figure, why not? 

When I enter through the automated door, I lose time or it stops all-together. Or perhaps it is a black hole—the kind in movies used as a plot twist but in this case an alien isn't popping out of a bottle of rotgut tequila. Other than my heartbeat, which fills my ears along with an inside-the-head-silent-screaming omgomgomgomgomg litany, all sound fades as I unintentionally become performance art.

Of the lengthy line at the store register and the dozens in the connected restaurant sitting at tables, playing slot machines, and wandering to pay, leave, or go to the bathroom, I spot one lone wide-eyed stranger staring at me, mirroring my shock and horror. Masked, the person looks as though they have belatedly realized where they are and are trapped, surrounded by the walking dead. 

In the freeze state between fight and flight, my side-vision detects the door I entered has in the short interim nearly finished closing. At that moment, one of the unmasked mutants completes his purchase and moves in my direction. I snap out of my shocked stupor. My mouth, hanging open under my mask begins to form words as I shove my foot in the narrow gap left by the door, blocking it from closing entirely.

    "Are you kidding me....only one mask in this place?!...."

My knee wedges in to force the door open wider as horrified-me stares back over my shoulder at the other mutants.

    "....You're all crazy as shit!...."

In uber-slow-motion, me-eyeballs the silent mutant as he continues on past through the true-exit door while my wide hip presses the entry-opening further. Full-blown horror activates the rest of my words as I gazelle-leap through the doorway and in three gigantic leaps reach my car.

    "....Fuck!....Fuck!....Fuck!"

A postscript answer to an assumed reader-question:

    "What did the unmasked mutants do in response to me calling them crazy?"

The answer is more shocking than the event itself—the walking dead confirmed their status. They resumed conversation, continued standing in line, eating, drinking, and playing slots as though nothing had happened.

I don't know if there is an antidote to this level of dysfunctional un-living. It may be that humanity has reached a devastating point. One in which a large swath of us will continue to be a suicidal threat to others as the rest attempts to build a better country. Either way 2021 is likely to go very much as 2020 is right now....

Days of shocking enlightenment, horror, and gazelle-leaps to safety and nights sipping wine while chanting "There but for the grace of my resilient mind and belief in science, go I."

The Opossum Solstice.

 

Opossum is an intriguing word. For those thinking it should be spelled “possum”— that's only in Australia where that species of animal lives. Here in America, it is the opossum.

An opossum wandered by on my walk yesterday as if it had decided it was time to toss a rope into my swamp-wallowing. Could be it was a sage-offering, the opossum a new recruit to my tribe of spirit animals. It has all the markings of eMMe-truth, especially when entwined with this particular solstice.

 

A well-known fact of the opossum is that when it perceives danger, it often topples over in a grand death moment, the breath of the animal even perfumed with the stench of a corpse. What is lesser-known, is that occasionally an opossum forgets it is still alive, the slowing of its breath and heartbeat stealthily removing the idea it is play-acting. Apparently, the stellar performance fools even the actor and the animal never moves again.

 

In terms of the 2020 solstice and my swamp-wallowing, I wonder if I and many in our nation, have lost the knowing that we are not yet dead. Our breath though barely perceptible is still there, bodies waiting for minds to catch up to what is true. 2020 has felt excruciating. Loss of health and or loved ones to Covid-19, loss of income, loss of routine, loss of normalcy. While 2020 has been horrific, so were the three years previous as one-by-one, opossums toppled over after encountering predators unleashed to annihilate good governance and a semi-functioning society.

 

My story is complicated by a history of predatory encounters, each toppling me into corpse pose. Over time, corpse pose became normalized, not fully-living or fully-dying, walking as though I lived while living as though I had died.

 

The Opossum Solstice is a reminder that we do indeed still breathe. Though predators exist, they are not close enough to smell our breath. It is time to move.

 
Tonight, I will set a bonfire with the intention that my opossum awakens so she and I may live as though we are indeed, still breathing.