Walking out of an eye exam today, I had to ask myself, how is this going to work after the fall? I imagined all the paperwork behind the ordering and restocking of contact lenses and eyeglass frames, the association that got together to decide the things a person needs to know to be certified as an eye doctor, the insurance companies that decided whether or not and how much they would help a person receive proper eyewear, the mechanics who invented the equipment that measured my eyes’ pressure reactivity, and on and on. And then I was thinking about the careful dance of selling, reordering, and restocking that occurs daily at the restaurant. And then I was thinking about all the certifications, regulations, inventories, and procedures involved in every step of every process of every business and organization in the modern world. And then I was thinking about how intricately connected these processes are.

So what will happen after the fall? I don’t mean after the government falls, or after the corporations fall, or any of that naive revolutionary dribble. I mean after those calamities which we cannot control which will forever change our lives. I mean after peak oil begins to be felt, and transportation becomes much more expensive. After this recession intensifies and the US Dollar continues to weaken. After the federal government becomes more disconnected from the reality of our lives. After mother earth is violated one more time than she can forgive. After warring ideologies manifest in more real wars. What happens after the fall of things as we know them?

Will we still have eye exams? Will they still have my exact brand and prescription in-stock at all times? Will the doctor still smile and shake my hand when I leave?

The real question for me is, does the future I favor in my writing afford the practicality of an eye exam? Because, really, a lot of this hyper-institutionalization has made a lot of our lives very convenient. An eye exam raises this question in particular because it is in between a pair of jeans and heart surgery; that is, in between a want and a need. How much will we sacrifice?