Status Updates From La Terre demeure

Lights slowly begin to dim over days: He did not want to go to sleep. He felt as if he was sitting up by the deathbed of his most treasured & oldest friend.

116: then…He peered through the darkness at the city, he could see no light…this the was the end.

The desire for activity which had expressed itself in his eastern trip had now faded out. He slept a great deal. He also found himself sitting for long periods, conscious but in sheer apathy. Such lapses however frightened him & he always forced himself into some kind of activity.

103: His chief interest remained the careful observation of what was happening to the world after the removal of man’s controls.

He felt no “great strain either of shock or loneliness. He attributes this to his maintenance of interest in the whole progress of events & to his own peculiar temperament.”

On thru NE; spent week at Estes Park CO, great fishing

Reaching CA wildfires are burning uncontrolled, has to detour pass thru burning areas

Reaching Bay he sees lights are still, maybe last in the whole world…back to parent’s house

Drive back thru PA to OH

“By now gas pressure had failed almost everywhere” but he had proquired a 2-burner gasoline stove for cooking; tinned goods remained basis of diet, foraged veggies/fruit

IN, IL, IA… came upon ppl now generally in 2s & 3s, the isolated molecules were beg to find one another; no one wanted to come, he didn’t want to stay

They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world…had always been inflicted upon organisms which had specialized too highly…they could no longer adapt themselves to new conditions. They were almost at the opposite end of the scale from those negroes in AR who had so easily gone back to the primitive way of living on the land.

Cries as he leaves Milt & Ann behind…

Finally accosted by Milt, he & Ann living in luxury apt; play records, drink warm gin; had heard/seen cars go by in parkway but no ppl (?); ask him to stay & most pleasant ppl he had met but no “he would strike back for the west again.”

He liked them & pitied them. How could they survive winter in city though w/no central heat-“they were city dwellers & when city died they would hardly survive w/o it

Very nice eco aside regarding slow decay of cities…

“…in overcrowded Manhattan the disease had probably raged even more severely…also the secondary kill might have been more severe in a wholly urbanized population.”

Drives thru Manhattan not k treated in stragglers but some larger center but sees no one & not even bodies? That seems unlikely…

Nice eco aside 86 on how Central Park grows out

On to PA

“The surviving ppl he found were generally singles occasionally couples. They were anchored firmly in their own places. Stimes they seemed to wish he would stay there w/them but they never wished to accompany him. He still did not find any of them w/whom he wished to share the future…”

Then to NYC…”why he had headed to NY even unconsciously. This to every Am was the center of the world.”

Memphis; shoots calf & mother, hacks out liver; staying at a cabin realizes he’s bored, reads 6-mo old magazine

Eco aside: “Omce the fences are broken both in fact & symbol then there are no more blocks & chunks of land & sharp changes but all is hazy & wavy & fades from one into the other as it was in the beginning” —returning to a state of nature

Considers enslaving them, holy shit:

“I might be a king in a little way if I remained. They may not like it but from long habit I think they would accept the situation—they would raise vegetables & pigs & chickens for me & I could soon have a cow or two. They would do all the work that I needed to be done. But the idea was only fleeting…began to think the negroes had solved the situation better than he.”

Crosses into AZ, sleeps in Kingman, crosses continental divide then to Rte66; sees headless flick of sheep tended by sheep dogs; Albuquerque finds no one; to OKC; AR, picks peaches, sleeps N Little Rock; comes across well tended garden, black family

Appropriates station wagon, loads up supplies, dog acquired, prepare to leave for ?

Ecological asides in parentheses, tracking changes in environment w/humans diminished: “As with cats & dogs, so also w/the grasses & flowers that man had long nourished…”

…searching to see whether some greater remnant might be left somewhere”- highway 99 south thru San Joaquin Valley then to cross the Mojave

Secondary Kill: of those spared many would fall victim to some trouble from which civilization had previously protected them: murder suicide accident insanity drunk

Meets drunkard, menacing couple (pimp & whore?), hoarder as closer to Bay, then returns to parents home

“…he did not need immediately to commit his future to the first person he met. He would do better to pick & choose…particularly since everyone he had so far seen was obviously suffering from shock…he would rather be alone until he found someone more congenial than the day had offered.”

The obvious explanation was that he had actually had this new disease & that it had combatted w/the snake poison in his blood, The one neutralizing the other. That at least offered the simplest explanation as to why he was still alive. Makes himself brekkie in house, smokes a fag; decides to go to parents house, hits empty highway w/coyote trotting the only traffic; finds parents house empty, sleeps there

Honks horn repeatedly, no one comes; goes to shop sees newspaper inside Crisis Acute headline; breaks glass with hammer; paper from week ago: new unknown disease swept country, 25-35% of pop had died, super-measles, airborne, “ had sprung up simultaneously in every center of civ- outran attempts at quarantine; breaks into house, again w/hammer, tries radio, nothing

Drives to nearest town, sees body beside road on the way, ants crawling over its face; town empty, some stores locked others not, wonders if he’s rip van winkel

Isherwood (Ish) is ecology student writing dissertation, on mountain cabin; bit by snake on page 1, becomes ill; wonders why haven’t seen any cars go by in last week but two men open cabin door—when he yells for help, “I’m sick,” they flee. Recovers, goes down to camp store, no one there, becomes uneasy