Graphic by Maria Petersson
I still have time to think about bad jam. I mean, the world is ending and all, but god, I can’t stop thinking about it, more than my wife and family and most of my friends (dead dead dead dead). But that jam, good god. If I had known this would all come to a head just a few minutes after I let it slide that the jam was disgusting and too sugary and maybe even moldly, if I had known about the fires and the floods, do you know what I would have done?
I would have gone to the supermarket and purchased a reasonably priced jar.
I don’t think prices exist anymore, but jars evolve alongside my species–I’ve had to piss in one for the past two months and toss it out the window like I’m in medieval Europe.
They were living through an End Time of their own, a pressing space where there was no more room for them, for their kings, for their Gods. I think I must be a feudal lord because I run the church and State of this room. I run the marks on the walls (mostly new) and the loose grey tiles (I blame the dog), and there is no dog here anymore, just two fridge pictures of a German Shepherd which survived on a fridge that didn’t.
Perhaps the jars could serve a preservative purpose–
Why hadn’t I thought of that already?
Instead I had been hanging things to try like some aesthetic butcher, because I lived in the suburbs, and can you really blame me for making my survival an aesthetic when it was all a daydream to avoid this awakening?
I think I must be a feudal lord because I don’t have to ring the bells, there’s someone else for that, and they’ve been ringing (I think) for 57 days (I guess), sounding the alarm, telling us that our worship is needed urgently, that we will be judged soon.
What I wouldn’t do for a small indulgence, for that final taste of non-moldly jam.
JFK, or someone, or Saint Francis for all I care said something about something about making it through the week. I go out every day to make it through the week. I bring back food, and hope for its wholesomeness. There is something about being alone that makes me know that this death is not my end. That I can somehow survive this.
In my life, my sleeping life, I was barely able to survive, crawling around pickle jars (jars) and doors and letting other people play at helping when in reality neither of us needing helping and both of us needing creating, creating a hero out of someone else, creating the glowing aura of protection around me.
I can survive without records and a good majority of my friends and my beloved plants who couldn’t be let near cats. I can survive and I can write here. I have everything I need here, more than I’ve ever had anything I ever needed when I had everything and needed for nothing. I can smell and touch and taste without anyone doing the tasting for me. Or me doing the tasting for me, these days.
My main confidant is a basketball. I know what you’re thinking–a basketball? That’s so wrong! But have you ever tried reading your lecture notes to an inanimate object? It’s a great study technique, it’s very legitimate.
For some reason, the basketball is white rather than orange. It is a reference to a movie that I keep this trinket. It is an ironic postmodern cut to a sensibility we’ve long since abandoned. But it’s my only real friend, actually, because the fake ones are all gone, and I don’t need to put these layers over myself like I’m sure a therapist would tell me I would be doing were I around jealous bitches. There is no more room for jealous bitches.
It would be a merciful life if only I had some goddamn jam.