I wanted to post one more small apocalypse (even though I have two already). As I was typing my final for class, I noticed small black spots near the creases of the pages in the first few chapters. Curious, I smelled them: mold. Black mold grew (is growing) in my critical theory text book. Wondering why, I remember when I had decided that Womanliness as a Masquerade would be better read and blogged about with a bottle of five dollar champagne (with tax). When I spilled one of my glasses onto my book, my first instinct was panic. Even though I am not critical theory's biggest fan, the possibility of ruining a book--any book horrified me. So I washed it with dish soap in my dorm bathroom and dried it with a blow dryer. This apparently didn't stop the mold, but it did warp my pages, make my ink-notes and highlights bleed, and made my book unresellable.
My book now looks as though it has survived an apocalypse. This book, which will have no material value nor means of survival to me should there be an apocalypse, acts as though it is more important than my pristine The Dangerous Book for Boys or How to Do Practically Anything that I stole from my brother. This is the book that questions the sacredness of everything, my idea of who I am, why I behave the way I do, and how I am to interpret the world around me. And yet it is not in my bookshelf next to How to Do Practically Anything or in the trunk of my car like The Dangerous Book for Boys. No, The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader is in my bed next to my book of poetry and my Norton's anthology.
Is it wrong that my first instinct will not be to grab the books that will teach me how to rebuild and survive physically, but to gather the books that question my daily life? Should the apocalypse come tomorrow, shall I grab the moldy book that already makes me think apocalyptically? If it has already survived the rough dangers of my booksack; lived through mold; and a slightly drunken cleansing, I believe that The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader will make it into my Parable of the Sower emergency pack or my The Road grocery cart. Simply because it is the lone survivor of the small apocalypse that was that night (I knocked over the champagne and spilled it over my notes in a rush to save the book I still don't really like).
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It is interesting that you make this choice. Although I also like to question the deeper meaning of things and further my intellectual prowess but I also recognize the power of survival. One of the most interesting things about this post is that you assume you need to think during an apocalypse and two, that society can rebuilt after it. We can discuss for hours what an apocalypse is and why we think of it as such but that is for another time. Your piece shows that we assume our ideas will rise above the natural world. The intellect can rise above the height of any tree or mountain. This is true, our intellect has put us into previously unforeseen places, we have built spaces ships to let us visit the moon and we send radio frequencies to different galaxies. Humans have truly transcended the normal bounds of the planet. But, as shown in The Road, when you're starving and fighting cannibals, Descartes might not be the topic of conversation, survival is. This comment is in no way a condemnation of your love for human capability but an overall insight of our presumed power in the world.
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