The End of the World Pot Luck

It was like a wraith, a cold shadow and a feeling, a visitation before or after death and like a cat or a wolf detecting danger, my hackles rose and my mind jolted down to earth and it all came together. There had to be an end of the world pot luck and I would host it. 

It’s hard for me to put thoughts together because there is so much. It goes back fifty years or more. But let me start on the beach. Nevil Shute’s novel about an atomic apocalypse and the end of the world. It stayed with me. On the Beach. And then came the film directed by Stanley Kramer. 

It goes something like this. They’ve dropped the Bomb and all life north of the equator seems to be gone. No signal. Incommunicado. Nothing. And now radiation is slowly making it’s way across the equator, high-altitude currents gradually mixing with southern winds drifting down towards Melbourne, Australia, possibly the last place humans survive after the apocalypse. It was my home. 

And then they pick up an erratic morse code signal that makes no sense but indicates possible life in the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile, an American submarine on assignment in the South Pacific is docked in Melbourne. Gregory Peck is the captain, Tony Perkins first officer and Ava Gardener the love interest. And there’s Fred Astaire as a scientist who races fast cars. 

So Gregory Peck sets sail to track what maybe human life implicit in the erratic morse code signal. And they track it to Hawaii and the sub surfaces and they scan the foreshore through the periscope for signs of life and they see none. So some sailors row ashore and find a shack with broken windows and shutters and the breeze is blowing off the tropical sea and the cord from a blind is caught, wrapped around the morse code tapper or clacker and all we hear is the beep-beep-beeeeep-bep-beep of the wind. 

Gregory Peck returns to Melbourne and he and Ava Gardener await the end of the world. The last shot is outside the Melbourne Post Office with no people, only pages of newspapers blowing down Collins Street. 

So I sent out word to a few friends and invited them to a pot luck  to see what they thought about the state of things. I thought things were pretty fucked up.

In no particular order but important to me was the discovery of The Epstein Class and all their shenanigans, the same class that bombs Gaza with impunity. The Epstein Class that tracks and measures and listens and stores our digital lives in hungry information centers that expand with concentration camps nearby, cages, concrete and steel with lights blazing  day and night, suddenly America has fallen of a cliff and very soon the shit is going to hit the fan. So this is what I wrote in my note book as I prepared for the  pot luck.

Food. Water. Shelter.  Electricity. Communications. Access. Sewage. Transport. Medical. Warmth, fire and AC. Solar. Music.  “Who ya gonna call?”

As I made this inventory I realized that I should only invite people who are within walking distance  because if there is no gas we’ll be walking more. And I wondered if I was being paranoid. But when people arrived that day and we sat in the old Hancock house living room with the sunroom doors wide open so some sat out there with the plants and the rest in a circle on those Shaker wooden chairs, I realized that we all felt it. There is a ripple going around the world and we all feel it. It is the Zeitgeist. 

As the day approached I opened Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Manual because I knew I’d probably find something there and I did. 

“For the sake if the earth itself, I evolved a philosophy close to Taoism from my experience with natural systems and the forest. It is a philosophy of working with rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; at looking at people and systems in all their functions therefore increasing yield; permitting systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.

“A basic question may be proposed two ways: ‘What can I get from this land or this person?’ or ‘What does this person or land have to give if I cooperate with them?’”  

Cooperation not competition.

“There is too much contemporary evidence of ecological disaster which appalls me and it should frighten you too. Our consumptive life style has led us to the very brink of annihilation. We have expanded our right to live on earth to an entitlement to conquer the earth, yet “conquerors” of nature always lose. To accumulate wealth, power and land beyond one’s needs in a limited world is truly immoral be it as an individual, an institution or a nation-state.” 

The gathering proceeded and we went around the circle each sharing their interests and concerns and skill set if they felt inclined. The room was abuzz. 

“Make sure you have some money put aside in a fire proof box”. 

“We won’t be seeing so much of each other because I live on a farm and its at least two hour walk to town. There will be a drawing in and we’ll get closer and share because we have to. Family will be important.”

“I can help people with small scale solar installations and off-grid water systems.”

“My daughter is in Hawaii and the flooding was so bad I couldn’t visit and she was completely cut-off and they set up this radio system and I’m learning about it.”

“How can I visit my kids and grandkids in California?”

“We’re planting more root crops this year, more potatoes and onions and they last if you store them right, in a cool place.”

“I’m from the city and was a squatter and a social worker and I’m interested in harm reduction and I’m putting up one of those small library boxes outside my house on Main Street except I’m putting Narcan in it because there are going to be more drug addicts.”

That wasn’t on my dance card. 

Then we moved to the potluck and people peeled off into groups like they do and talked and ate. There is a saying in permaculture: the problem is the solution and this seemed to be the case at the end of the world pot luck.