Tortured faces In Our Grey World

Pop-pop!! Pop-Pop-Pop!! I think five shots just blasted into the air right below my windows! What the EFFF is going on??? My eyes crack open like broken eggs. Hard and prickly stuff is still stuck to my lashes.

I must have been crying again. I can't remember. A Niagara Falls of adrenalin crashes through my body. What time is it? What day is it? What night is it? Let me get my bearings...ok ok. It's pitch black and pouring outside, check. My oversize, neon pink clock says it's 3:37am, check. The sliver of moonlight highlights for me that I'm in my cramped, cluttered bedroom and acid rain drools down the fractured glass windows, check.

A ghastly, cutting shriek stabs the rage outside. "Pleaseee...nooo" The begging cry gets shoved to the flooded sidewalk by the pelting drops and flows into the corner sewer, like everthing else. The man's once enviable fedora now crushed, is floating away too, along with his life. His last meaningful breath washes over the cheap aluminum beer cans nearby. They collide with the concrete surrounding the subway grate and they are swallowed by the Manhattan underbelly. Hollow, empty sounds linger above his body.

Maybe someone will help this fading heart...this sobbing, gasping, grey and bloody knot of a twisted human. I surely hope so. I'm a witness but I just can't step into that, whatever that is. I'm simply too weak now and I could get killed as well. Lashing rain never stops killers doing what they do. They don't care about getting wet. They only care about themselves. Killers kill.

I should hear the police sirens soon. Oh merde, I totally forgot. There won't be any police sirens. What was I thinking? I'm not fully awake yet. Excuse me, but my brain is still fuzzy at this hour. It's like a fluffy skein of mohair wrapped around a twisted ball of wool. All my loose hairs are poking every which way inside my head and out. Cut me a brake. If you went through what I've been through recently, you would be testy and confused, too.

It's June 2043, New York city. It's three months after the earth's core did the unthinkable. Over a period of eight days, mother nature went berserk. It vomited up all it's grotesque guts and it's entire innards en masse, from every possible orifice on the face of this planet. Every continent was affected and all hemispheres were involved. Every conceivable faultline around the globe above ground or within the depths of the oceans gushed the core's magma. Tsunami and hurricanes followed.

Day after day our planet spewed up, dry heaved, beltched, coughed, choked, spit, split, ejected, exploded, shook, trembled and smoked with total wretchedness and bile. The damage has been insurmountable.

Each hour (if we choose) we can relive the tangled and traumatic mess on the remaining tv news. We still have sporadic electricity and daylight still follows the night. Those are the basics. Everything else is a coin toss.

Everyone said this catastrophic event could never happen. But the earth played out it's own agenda. Most volcanologists (those that study volcanoes) always agreed that the east coast of the United States would never ever erupt again. Our earth is a dynamic planet and has "shifting plates" all over the world including along our east coast. There is zero chance of volcanic explosions in the eastern states and that has been the popular scientific belief for over a hundred years. No one ever imagined the possiblities of the eastern seaboard erupting from previously extinct volcanoes. After all, these particular volcanoes have been extinct for over 45 million years. But in fact, nature always does whatever it wants to do. Nature always wins like "the house" in a casino. Don't ever bet against nature.

After the torrential rains and the global floods, about half of the New York city dwellers were tragically drowned or swiftly wiped out from various, hideous accidents. That number was into the hundreds of thousands. When the initial rains poured so furiously those first days, almost everyone in the subways lost their life. They were trapped. Nothing could be done. Only the people living and working above the seventh floors survived and only those that were along the central avenues in Manhattan were spared because they were on higher ground.

Bodies floated for weeks throughout many of the streets, depending on the tides. The stench was unimaginable. It's an all pervasive odor that never leaves your brain. It remains engraved in your psyche like the marks on a copper etching plate, deep and inky black.

Barges were brought in from New Jersey and the metropolitan road workers from both New Jersey and New York were ordered to collect the floating dead. Smaller motorboats were used to navigate all the side streets to look for bodies and all the deceased were taken to be buried on higher ground along the Hudson River. Both sides of the river were designated to receive the bodies. Since that time, Manhattan has been in a state of complete and utter devastation. It was a hopeless crisis then and those of us remaining must fend for ourselves in our new harsh reality.

Now, we all live inside a grey and dusty version of Edward Hopper's painting, Nighthawks. Many of the streets are still clogged with mud or partially swept to imitate normalicy. Most of the buildings and shops are abandoned, too. Emotionally, we must learn to get by with total alienation and zero feelings. One never knows who will bring the next cut.

The worst of the worst still exists. Rogue killers, grifters, rapists, thieves and terrorists seek out the weak and vulnerable. All the usual human atrocities continue but there is a new order regarding who is in charge and how things are taken care of. Everything and everyone has changed. Even now, young children are void of joy and laughter.

Welcome to a world where everyone's face is tortured or full of tears. I'm exhausted and depleted.

Where is Buddha when I need him? "Buddha...come into the bedroom." "There you are...jump up...good boy!" "Shall we sit and read some art books before we fall asleep again?" "Here, stretch across my belly." "How about the one called Lucien Freud...or maybe the book about Francis Bacon?" "You'll love both of these." "You know what? I just decided I will do a painting of you in the next few days." "Yes you, with your golden heart necklace...I'm suddenly very inspired." "You will be the only one without a tortured face."

Since we still have a roof over our head, I focus on two priorities each day. Securing food is always our biggest challenge. Each day I ration out the remaining rice I will cook for us along with the thawed out remnants from my freezer. Local farmers are still digging up what remains of their vegetable crops after all the volcano ash buried so much. Only root vegetables can be salvaged at this time. All the other above ground staples were decimated by the ash plumes, the winds and the torrential rains. Some Westchester farmers still make their way into the city. It takes them two days. Many arrive with their horse drawn carriages (gasoline is so limited) and they sell out every last potato, onion or carrot within a matter of minutes.

Now the state governments consider the farmers to be our most important asset and are beginning to treat them accordingly, but the progress is slow. Water purification men have top positions in the governments, too. Gone are the investment bankers, the hedge funders and stock brokers. The previous world has been destroyed and so now we start with baby steps once again.

There are two things that keep me breathing in the daylight hours. One is painting the tortured faces I see outside and the other is taking care of Buddha. This is my simple truth now. It's surprising how entertained I've become as I mix my colors and loosely apply them to my remaining art papers. I wonder if I will end when my paper and canvas supply ends. Perish the thought.

It's important to believe in two facts. Never say never and always have more than two oars in your dinghy. My surreal world fluctuates each day as I play a mental hop scotch game with myself. I jump between the real world that I know exists now and my mirage-like former life I was once tethered to and loved. While the new horrific chapters fall upon one another, my precious previous life melts into a pile of sepia toned slides, all stuck together. I can see certain memories but nothing is crystal clear any longer. I guess the nursery rhyme is really true: Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream...merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Art on Instagram @_dorothy_palmer