Command + R
Lately I've been doing some apocalypse reading. It's out of character for me, honestly. I'm not a speculative fic buff, and most of the time, if I'm not reading for work I'm looking for at least a little escape. Last time we were doing Big Bad Times™, I could not read thematically aligned fiction (see: me completely freaking over Station 11 during early COVID).
Then a couple months ago I decided to reread Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (a novel I hadn't cracked since the nineties, when it was assigned to me in middle school).
ID: The cover of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. A young black woman in a red dress against a tan background, with black title text.
The book is over 30+ years old, but whether or not it can be spoiled is something I'm sure people are still fighting over on a dark corner of Threads, so I'll try my best to leave you with only the most pertinent details.
The novel-as-journal follows our protagonist, Lauren, a teen girl in a 2024 upon which late-stage capitalism, political instability, and climate change are wreaking havoc across her native California (👀). Conditions are dire and leadership is conservative, inattentive, and largely privatized across the country, with resource scarcity resulting in some states closing off their borders to one another, and neighborhoods building themselves into walled communes. Realizing her family's situation isn't sustainable, Lauren begins to squirrel away things for an emergency "go-bag".
(Many things happen! Extremely prescient stuff! Lots of plot! Read this book!)
When Lauren eventually does leave home, she is at one point looking into her pack and taking stock, in particular examining the fruit and vegetable seeds she brought with her:
"Granted, a lot of it is old seed. I hadn't renewed it as often as I should have when I was at home. Strange that I hadn't. Things kept getting worse and worse at home, yet I had paid less attention to the pack that was supposed to save my life [....] There was so much else to worry about."
I've found myself mulling this passage over in the weeks since I finished the book, in part because I think it so perfectly encapsulates how living in a state of constant angst can mess with our priorities in profound and often cyclical ways, even for folks who are trying their best to be prepared. We get overwhelmed. We get wrapped up in survival and forget about why we're trying so hard to survive.
To some degree, any amount of planning for the future is privileged. And yet, as I was reminded by Lauren's journey, not having to plan for the future (particularly a bad one) is a privilege, too.
So lately I've been trying to figure out what my "seeds" are--even when I'm overworked, or downtrodden, or scared--what can I prepare or stow away now that might be ready to burst open in the future when I need it most? This can be about stuff stuff, but it's also about downshifting out of panic, "everything is hopeless" mode, and into a more measured kind of sustainable survival . This is true for Lauren, too, who in addition to material goods is also developing a philosophy/religion she dubs "Earthseed" she uses to think about what happens after the collapse. In this way, we keep moving forward, even if we have to trick ourselves into it sometimes.
Here's what I've got so far:
-Ok, actual seeds! The boys and I have started a small indoor garden. So far, it's mostly lettuce. We're working on it. If nothing else, the UV light is making me less cranky. Also, composting.
ID: various green plants growing indoors out of two white PVC pipes
-Story seeds: I'm always jotting down random ideas in little notebooks, but recently I've been more conscious about explicitly teeing up first lines or paragraphs of stories, little gifts to my tired future brain so I can still create even when I'm feeling down.
-Knowledge seeds: Currently trying to learn more about labor and union organizing, so I'm reading Jane McAlevey's A Collective Bargain and Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell.
-Administrative seeds: Yeah, I did it, I renewed everyone's passports. I applied for K's Certificate of Citizenship and changed his status at the Social Security office even though it was a huge pain in the ass. (For naturalized citizens, you need to go in person to an office to change your status from permanent resident to citizen. It doesn't change automatically in the system!) Also, get those overdue vaccines. Just do it.
-Self-care seeds: Stretching. I hate it, and also I feel better, every single time.
-Tech seeds: Not using AI. Every time you don't ask ChatGPT, you're banking that water for later. You can also remove AI results from your Google searches by adding "&udm=14" to the URL of your search, or download a Chrome extension to do this for you.
-Community seeds: I think it's obvious by now that mutual aid and community organizing are going to be our last stands, so coalition-building and learning about nonviolent organizing has been the obvious work. But I've also been thinking about ways I might better tend to my community and friendships in the everyday, not as a means to some future end, but as a way of re-grounding myself in why any of this is worth it.
I know a writing professor who starts off her workshop courses with an icebreaker asking students to share what skills they might bring to surviving a zombie apocalypse. It's a great writing exercise, and now Butler has me thinking it's a great life exercise, too. What's something in your hypothetical go-bag? What do you already know or have that needs to be refreshed?
It's hard to consider what we might need for the future when bad things are happening now, and especially when various knuckleheads are working their hardest to distract us. But I'm going to try following the Parable's lead and keep moving forward. Hell, the book was right about pretty much everything else.
Deaf and disabled folks are often left behind in times of natural disaster and conflict. If you or a loved one needs material support, shelter, or information in the wake of the ongoing wildfires and are struggling with access, please reach out to Off the Grid Missions.
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