Après-calypse
(What if you threw an armageddon and nobody came?)
“Twas the night before nothing, and all through the Vedic Seventh House,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a Tzotzil-Tzeltal Hun-Ahpu.”
So, fellow Earthlings – we made it! 21 December 2012 is now behind us, and we’re still here! No global disaster. No earthquake or tidal wave, no volcanic eruption, no communications disruption. No meteor strike, no meteorological stroke, no fireball rainstorm. No societal collapse, except Detroit. No invading aliens or scary monsters, unless you count John Kerry and his Giant Pointy Chin of Death.
After all the hubbub, here we are…the Saturday everybody was betting against. Day One of the Fourteenth Mayan Baktun (literal translation: “kosher bakery”). The most wager-loaded weekend in the history of mankind, outside of All-Saints Bingo Night at the Vatican, and Chicago politics.
My, my. Has another baktun really come and gone? Seems like only yesterday, we were ushering in a fresh new Thirteenth Baktun (literal translation: “baker’s dozen”) with a hearty ‘Toxlpretnik.’ (literal translation: “Yo! Nice pretnik!”)
But as cataclysmic galaxy-disrupting end-of-all-things events go, this one was a real naval-gazer. I’ve seen more carnage at the grocery on “Expired Milk Day.” This latest Mayan death-to-all-fest was about as yawny as Hillary Clinton, deflecting a Congressional hearing or a conjugal offer (“Not tonight, dear. I have a ferocious diplomatic immunity.”)
No, this apoca-lapse will doubtless be ranked on the excite-o-meter somewhere between a black-and-white rerun of “An Andy Williams Labor Day Singalong” and Michael Moore’s five-hour-long, critically-panned documentary, “REM Sleep,” starring Lindsay Lohan as Nick Nolte.
Even the final curtain’s schedule was clumsy and indecisive. Some doom-watchers determined that the world would end just after midnight Thursday; other fate-junkies had called it for dawn Friday (probably the people who have to clean the universe’s bathrooms before the workday begins); still other eschatology-hounds thought it would all be over, cosmically-speaking, at midnight Friday, as if the universe ran on the same principles as an off-campus beer bar. And Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology, History, and Colorful Beach Towels maintained that we’d all miscalculated the Mayan Long Count anyway, and so the real last Last Call would actually take place sometime the following Sunday.
(It’s contrarian nonsense like that, of course, that helps explain why nobody’s ever heard of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology, History, and Colorful Beach Towels.)
But it was a false alarm, as everyone now knows (except for CNN, who are still calling it an apocalyptic “trend”). And hindsight, as they say, is 20-20, especially if you’re having hindsight and your planet wasn’t vaporized.
Leading up to the non-event event, however, Earthlings everywhere were gearing up for something big. It was like a global conference of people who talk to invisible rabbits named Harvey, if all those people also wore robes, dream-catcher earrings, Birkenstocks, and were all named Zed the Scar, or Endive.
On that non-fateful Friday, 21 December 2012, if any particular place on Earth could’ve been called “downtown Doomsday,” that place would be Merida, in the Mexican Yucatan, home to the Mayan complex known as Chichen Itza. (literal translation: “Chicken Little.” See? See how it’s all starting to come together?)
In ancient Mayan culture, Chichen Itza was a sort of Roman Coliseum, according to a recently unearthed 5,000-year-old episode of that Mesoamerican hit game show, “Who Wants to Eat the Internal Organs of a Millionaire?” And on Faux Friday, there were more free spirits at Chichen Itza than there are pot-smokers at a Detroit auto plant.
But apparently, based on the reported clouds of pot and patchouli at Chichen Itza’s Armless-geddon, America’s auto unions were well-represented. Reporters noted an abundance of joint-huffers among the tree-huggers. In fact, there at Chicken Little Central during D-Day, it was a sort of bohemian Noah’s Ark.
There were Buddhists, druids, pagans, Republicans, and one guy wearing a seriously un-subtle skull ornament that was either a large, caffeine-crazed bird or an Elton John costume. Situated around ceremonial fires at the pyramid known as El Castillo, robed moon-eyed people chanted and blew into conch shells, perhaps in simulated worship of some primeval breathalyzer.
“We are in a new vibration,” proclaimed self-proclaimed spiritual master, Ollin Yolotzin, who won the event’s award for “Coolest Spiritual Master Name” and is also the head of an Aztec dance group Cuautli-balam (literal translation: “Glee”).
“We are in a frequency of love,” gasped the master, as he blew on a conch. Sadly, though, the frequency wore off fairly quickly – Vibration Boy nearly got arrested for conch-honking without a valid Apocalypse permit.
And then there was Gabriel, a Los Angeles-based spiritualist who claimed to embrace no “silly theatrics” about Friday’s no-pocalypse, while unpacking his ceremonial crystal skulls. He said this with a straight face.
Also in attendance at the Unarmored-geddon was one Dr. Nina, a minor celebrity among the baby doomers at Chicken Little, who pointed to her with their damp conchs and said she was “possibly the best credentialed spiritualist in attendance.” (literal translation: “Yo! Nice tin-foil hat!”)
Dr. Nina is president of a panel devoted to “pioneering consciousness” and another group that’s dedicated to “conscious evolution,” so she is obviously the go-to lady when you need some quick consciousness, or when you’ve overdone it on the patchouli. Dr. Nina is also known as one of the “Notable Luminaries of Evolutionary Leaders,” and I got five bucks that says there’s no such group. (If there is such a group, I’m guessing they gave themselves the twenty-five-dollar name “Notable Luminaries” at an emergency meeting of the Self-Aggrandizement Olympics.)
“I’m here to recommit myself to being free of attachments,” said Doc Nina, as she huddled to meditate in front of a small Mayan temple decorated with jaguar heads.
No worries, Doc. What with your going on and on about all that luminous pioneer jaguar consciousness, I’m guessing that you’ll be free of attachments for several weekends. No worries at all.
Of course, even though the Chick-fil-A Pyramids were getting the Mayan’s share of attention on Final Friday, there were Doom-Watches going on all over Earth. In England, a man calling himself Arthur Uther Pendragon showed up at Stonehenge and whipped the Druids into a short-lived frenzy, at least until the Druids learned that Arthur Uther’s real name was John Timothy Rothwell; once the Druids found that out, they beat him unconscious with a “Monty Python & the Holy Grail” DVD.
In central China, a group claimed that Jesus had reappeared as a woman (fortunately, there were no “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” side-effects). In Detroit public schools, classes were canceled, making it difficult for anyone to buy guns and drugs. In France, a group gathered in the Pyrenees to surrender to a spaceship, or anything else that showed up.
In San Diego, a man was detained by police just for wearing a gas mask and a machete. I mean, c’mon … in Southern California, that’s just work-a-day attire for the morning commute. For UPS drivers in Detroit, it’s standard issue.
But in our opinion, the best Apocalypse (Just Not) Now anecdote of all comes from Bolivia, that little landlocked central South American country whose primary exports are tin, cocaine, and Bolivians.
According to local reports, Bolivian President Evo Morales was ferried, on a wooden raft, to a small island in the middle of Lake Titicaca (literal translation: “Yo! Nice Tetons!”), where festive tin-snorting locals made sacrificial offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth), Machu Picchu Mama (Middle-Aged Cougar Lady), and Nacho Mama. (you do realize I’m making up these names, right?)
Meanwhile, back at Chicken Little: we met “Angela,” who flew down from Seattle to finally meet the aliens who originally brought human DNA to Earth – and, based on recent human behavior, the DNA delivery wasn’t all that long ago. Obviously overwhelmed by her surroundings, Angela waxed poetic while contemplating the mind-boggling, mist-shrouded El Castillo pyramid looming behind her: she called it “an edgy tower.”
She said “edgy tower.” Seriously.
Back home in the Pacific Northwest, Angela teaches driver’s ed.
Seriously.
By the way: Angela’s friend and traveling companion, “Sarah,” thinks that our alien-sourced DNA might once have granted us the ability to do amazing things: to see underwater, or to fly, or to like totally eat donuts without getting like way fat and stuff.
“I’m not sure, though,” Sarah warns. “These are theories.”
Seriously.
