The Coming Firestorm
On the bus to Philadelphia at dusk, I am listening to Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” thinking, as I always do when listening to that song, about how a man who grew up Orthodox Jewish might have come to write such a banger Christian anthem.
Sunsets make any environment beautiful, even the landscapes outside the window of a bus traveling down a highway that is every American highway — barren trees and failing strip malls and billboards and yellow arches glowing against the darkening sky. But as dusk turns to twilight, the landscape outside this bus becomes eerie, dilapidated, dystopian.
At the end of the very niche musical Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (in which I had the pleasure of seeing our very own Samuel James during Cast Aside Productions’ 2018 version), there is a song called “A Firestorm Consuming Indianapolis.” I think of that song now, too.
Out the window of this bus —
Are trailer parks of trailers rusting red
Forgotten dwellings, rotting, still and dead,
Extending all the way to Indianapolis …
And out the window
Of this bus
I think I see
I do… I see…
A firestorm, consuming Indianapolis
Igniting everything — the holiday inn
The hotdog stands and dodges,
Gas stations, motor lodges,
The day that couldn’t be
Has finally been.
A firestorm consuming Indianapolis
And every one of us
Is gonna burn!
Out the window of my bus, I see no flames yet. Instead, a billboard asking, “Are you preparing to meet Jesus?” Greenbaum is crooning in my ear, “Prepare yourself / You know it’s a must / Gotta have a friend in Jesus.”
My phone pings me a news article: the EU is urging its citizens to stockpile three days’ worth of food and water in case of war and disease. I just went to the consulate to get my new EU passport. I wonder if they will tell Europeans here to leave America soon. I wonder if Russia will invade Poland. I wonder if we will invade Europe. I wonder if I will be forced to give up one of my citizenships or be considered an enemy of the state.
My friend texts me: she was just chased from a subway car by a man with a gun.
I have been urging my parents to buy land outside of Portland to prepare for the impending climate apocalypse, but tonight I wonder if we’ll even make it that far. Later tonight, I Google: “how could German citizens have stopped Hitler?”
You’d think that in the age of quick mass media we’d be more prepared to deal with overt fascism. Maybe we are; it’s too soon to tell, perhaps. Mills is standing up to Trump for transgender athletes. Columbia is expelling student activists. Does it all come down to who can be bought or blackmailed?
But let’s not forget how many are cheering at their own subjugation. A reported 64 percent of Mainers support banning transgender athletes from competing in the category that fits their gender identity. And while there is human-rights organizing taking place across the country in response to all this repression, to me it feels mostly futile. I’m still, unfortunately, at a stage in my life where I want someone else to have all the answers. Please. What do we do?
During my last year of daycare at USM, they bought these space-age ’70s egg-shaped pod chairs. They had bright orange cushions and a glossy white plastic shell. They were in a dim room across the hall from the big playroom, and you could crawl inside and pull down the vinyl cover, enclosing yourself.
I liked to pretend to be a baby chicken, not yet hatched. Sometimes I would peep and squawk and flap my arms, pecking at the shell. Sometimes I would lie still, unborn, just the idea of a chicken.
I’m that unborn chicken a lot these days. I hide away in my cocoon, away from news of the big wide world. Most of my friends do, too. We’re all in a carton together.
