text: The Days After There were days of death and starvation and all variations of dramatic peril that one could imagine and many that one could not. It quickly became apparent just how flimsy our house of cards had become. One card placed upon the other year after year by fingers that reeked of greed and a lust for power - though some were motivated by the natural human belief in progress, expression, and the belief in a brighter morning. However, no one had bothered to look down for a very long time and when that whisper came, there was none who could not hear it or at least was not affected by its devastation - the whisper that brought down the castle that had been built over thousands of years and left it for what it was: stone, earth, and ash. Economies dissolved like paper swans in water as a dollar bill couldn’t stop the plagues or keep you warm in the grey of the cold, stone nights. Marionette governments disbanded and heads of politicians were mounted on plaques and displayed in line with the orders of elk, moose, and bears at truck-stop diners. The police stayed huddled in their homes with their blinds closed and burned their uniforms. The numbers “9-1-1” were graffitied under bridges and on churches - a mystic relic of a past where safety and security were something more than words to keep off your lips, lest you fall into the madness that only starvation, isolation, and the smell of death can bring. Disease, loss, and violence had numbed us until the desperate cries of children were as poignant as the sound of a leaking faucet. Life had become a cage with no freedom outside and no captive inside - just bars. There was no corruption, no anger, no opinions. Nothing can be wrong or right if there is nothing to begin with. Irony and humor were incomprehensible. There were no points of view, no ways of looking at things, no perspectives. No dreams and no nightmares. There were blank stares and an empty world. There was nothing. But these are the days after. For reasons unclear, mandated by a force we knew not of, one morning, the Sun shone brighter than it had the day before. And the next day, again. After the idea of a smile had all but evaporated from our minds, we at once decided everything was alright. No one believed in governments or monarchs or structures of society or even cultural ideals. After the firemen you had always believed could save you didn’t come and the senator who claimed to looked out for you ran into hiding at the first glimpse of danger, you turned to what you could see with your own eyes. Neighbors taught each other how to grow food, how to defend themselves. Others, how to make moonshine and play the guitar. No one worried about what they could not see as now, they could no longer believe in those things. They knew only what was here and what was now. What lay directly in front of their eyes. No one worried about this or lost sleep over that. No one thought about the future or ruminated on the past. We learned each other’s names and talked about our favorite books. We walked in the woods and over the remnants of a concrete age long past, overrun by sunflowers and daisies growing through the cracks of the pavement and tall oak trees that opened up the sky by pushing through the ceilings of dull, square buildings that used to give men dull, square thoughts. We took our place in the natural order of the world with the deer and the squirrels. We constructed no systems or structures larger than that which we could see and touch and which served only for peace and prosperity. We turned in the direction of the compass of our hearts and walked without looking back and without falter. We would at some times get lost in the curve of a trail and keep along with it, turning and spinning until we were dizzy simply for the sake of getting lost in a feeling. We moved with the rhythm of the winds and danced in and beneath the trees. We wrote songs and we fell in love as humans ought and thanked the stars that they shined, be it for us or for some other purpose that we were not meant to understand.