I keep hearing about the coming of the Apocalypse and I fear it’s going to happen soon.
Yes, we’ve all heard the stories and read the headlines, it’s all around us, they say, any minute the Apocalypse will arrive, they say, the end is near, the skies will open up and the rays of death will shoot down upon us, bringing an end to life and civilization as we know it and a tidal wave of terror unknown to all mankind. But these predictions are wrong.

How could all those predictions be wrong?
Throughout recorded history there have been approximately 5,509 predictions of the Apocalypse (adjusted for inflation, cultural insensitivity, illiteracy of the predictor, and radiation effects), 5,325 of which have been wrong. The important mistake these so-called soothsayers are making is that the Apocalypse happens first, and only, within each one of us, not on a global scale. And it’s been happening every day to new people since the dawn of time.

Do you mean that I am going to have my own Personal Apocalypse?
That’s right.

Should I be afraid of my Personal Apocalypse?
There’s good reason to be nervous about it.

When will it happen?
You can use these 7 easy steps to figure out when your personal Apocalypse is coming:
1) Count up the number of times you have forgotten something in the past week. And don’t forget that you could be forgetting what you’ve forgotten, so it’s best to assume at least 10.
2) Calculate the number of times you’ve read about something in the past month and not understood what it meant (don’t worry, no one else is looking, you can be honest).
3) Write down the number of times in the past month that you’ve thought to yourself, “I need a break from all this,” or something along those lines.
4) Add all these numbers together. This is number A.
5) Scramble up the digits in number A so that you get a new number, Number B.
6) Subtract the smaller of the two numbers from the larger. In other words, if Number B is bigger than Number A, subtract number A from number B, or vice versa.
7) Add up all the digits from your answer to create a new number, Number C. Now, take Number C and starting at the top of the circle below, count around it clockwise until you get to your symbol—that symbol will tell you when your Personal Apocalypse will occur.

Click here to decipher your symbol.

What will happen?
During your Personal Apocalypse you will need approximately 15 feet in all directions. Please make sure to maintain an appropriate distance from others during this time. Friends and loved ones should be kept away.
Every personal Apocalypse is different. Just because you’ve heard about someone else’s doesn’t mean yours will be similar.
This is not like ‘finding yourself’ or ‘getting in touch with your inner being’ this is the real thing. This is not some self-help regime or therapy session, this is an upheaval of everything you’ve ever thought or believed. They don’t write books about this because people wouldn’t want to buy them. This is the real ‘secret.’ This is what really brings about change.
All those ideas inside of you, all of those things you think about yourself and others, will be turned around.
A Personal Apocalypse is a lifting of the veil—all the knitting things together that you’ve spent your life doing, trying to make sense of this or that, trying to understand why a person would do a thing like that, why you’ve done the things that you’ve done, trying to understand your role in all of this, beliefs about how you are perceived and the judgments that you make about others, all of that, every last bit, is going to be upended. You’ll likely have to start all over again, if you make it through.
If you make it through, you may notice a short period where all things blue in the world start to look red or orange, and vice versa, where trees look like cars or buildings, and houses look like swimming pools or oceans. Make sure that you give yourself enough time to recover, don’t operate your car or other heavy machinery for a little while. If you drink or take drugs, wait for a couple of hours before resuming those activities. If you’re on your way to work when it happens, call in sick and go sit somewhere quiet while you wait for the gears inside your brain to start turning again, if you can manage to get them threaded back together at all.
If you feel it coming on unexpectedly and you’re in a public place, try to find somewhere to sit down. You may feel the need to cry out. Don’t worry, people will just assume you’re crazy and won’t look too closely at you, even if they recognize you, they’ll be too embarrassed to ever bring it up in conversation. You may lose your job if it happens at work, but with the realignment, that’s likely a good thing, you may not be able to continue doing all the same things you were doing before.
You may laugh, you may cry, you may feel a wave of fear surround you for the moments during the Apocalypse. It’s impossible to know what will happen, but it will affect you profoundly. This is a complete annihilation of your entire mental structure.
Your mental structure may very well be so engrained that once the shattered pieces start to come back together, they have no other choice but to reassemble in a vaguely similar pattern. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s exactly the same—on the staircase that you always walk up, your mind will no longer remember the 16th step and you’ll trip and fall. Simple words like ‘and’ and ‘or’ will cause you problems as you read the paper or a new book—you won’t be able to make sense of them, the sentences will lose their structure, the words will float and move into one another. Don’t bother getting new glasses, that won’t help.
And, yes, it could happen in your sleep—it’s been documented. You may wake up to what you think is a Neolithic age, your clothes will appear as animal skins and your furniture as stones in a cave. Or you may perceive that you’re in a boat adrift on the clouds, unsure of how you got there, and unsure of how you’ll get back down.
Everyone’s Personal Apocalypse is different.
You should be prepared for anything.

Can I prevent it?
No. You can try, but you will fail.

What’s the point of it?
Beliefs are easy to come by, but truths are more often stumbled upon than discovered. If you clutter yourself up with too many beliefs, you don’t have any room left for the truth, so sometimes it has to force its way in.

Can anybody save me?
Only you can save yourself. But we can certainly do our best on your behalf.

Contact us a www.newacquisition.org.

Alexis Clements

What alignment of the planets
what satellite messages of mysterious origin
led the good people in Downer’s Grove Illinois, at Parkay to this—
A pink squeeze bottle that dispenses a sort of margarine product
so grotesque, so unnatural, so cheerfully pink
that the corner store feels compelled to carry it
complete with a terrifying picture of a waffle
adorned with a pink, cozy smile.

If this is not a sign of the coming apocalypse
what is?

The sign at the art supply store that reads
“Attention model makers:
Balsa wood has become an endangered species.
We will no longer be able to supply this item.
We suggest you build your models with Basswood as an alternative.”

I could say what you expect to hear—the sea levels are rising,
the cities of Australia are experiencing the hottest year on record,
and weather patterns are shifting.
but these details rarely interest me, as they are so
omnipresent as to be mundane.

What scares me are the tiny things:
a Maine lobster named Hercules 20 years old shipped for sale
to a suburban grocery in Port Angeles, Washington.
There, he is rescued by schoolchildren
who raise the 200 dollars to buy him, then ship him
back to Maine where, in the words of the newspaper,
“he likely…succumbed to the trauma of long distance travel,
which is often fatal to lobsters.”

Beth Royer

Cathleen Carr, performer
Cathleen is an actor/improvisor whom you can see regularly in New York with here two woman show, TWO GIRLS FOR FIVE BUCKS. She trained at the Second City and Annoyance Theaters in Chicago, where she was also a company member with WNEP Theater.

Stephanie Taylor, performer
Originally from Texas, Steph first came to NYC to get her BFA from NYU. She then moved out to San Francisco where she landed at Theatre Rhinoceros, The Next Stage, The EXIT, The Noh Space, Word for Word, The Shelton Theatre, The Jon Sims Center, and Della in the SF Cult Featurette The Day I Shot President Kennedy, among others. She also toured nationally with the Obie and Tony Award winning SF Mime Troupe and did the physicalization of the animated character Princess Fiona in the Academy Award winning PDI/Dreamworks film, Shrek. Her return to NYC has landed her at The American Globe Theatre (directed by Dyana Kimball), The Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, WOW, Manhattan Theatre Source, The Producers Club, and a workshop production of The Sister Wall by Sara Moore at the Barrow Street Theatre.

Information on the others who contributed to this project, including the director, can be found here.

[Your Own Personal Apocalypse] NYC productions include: CONVERSATION by Alexis Clements (University Settlement, Emerging Artist Theatre and Dramatists Guild); NUMBERS by Kieron Barry (Manhattan Repertory Theatre); YOUR OWN PERSONAL APOCALYPSE by Alexis Clements (Chashama and OMFM); Georg Buchner’s WOYZECK (Central Park); Elmer Rice’s THE ADDING MACHINE (Theatre at Riverside Church); Bertolt Brecht’s BAAL, ISLAND OF SLAVES by Marivaux, and Bixby Elliot’s LOVE AND LITERATURE (Schapiro Theatre at Columbia); LIBRARY PLAY by Paul Cohen (J. Houseman Theatre), STILL LIFE by Emily Mann (Belt Theatre), RUBBER by Tom Sleigh (RAW Space) and CHOPPING by Magdalena Gomez (HERE Arts Center). Regional: ORESTES 2.0, by Charles Mee Jr.-Brookville, NY (LIU, CW Post guest director); DON GIOVANNI, by Mozart-Juneau, AK (Opera-to-Go); WHAT WILL I DO WHEN YOU’RE GONE, by Neil Bell-Cambridge, MA (The Market Theatre/BTM); TRAVELING NAKED, by Debra Lake Fortson-Boston, MA (Boston Playwrights Theatre); THROUGH THE LEAVES, by Franz Xaver Kroetz-Boston, MA (BDL); TRANSFIGURATION OF BENNO BLIMPIE, by Albert Innurato-Boston, MA (BDL). Dyana received her MFA in directing from Columbia University and currently teaches directing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is also a teaching artist in NY public schools and is the head of Columbia University’s Theatrical Collaboration Program for High School Students.

Original linocuts by Julia Vallera.