It’s The End of The World as We Know It

It’s The End of The World as We Know It

By Meakin Armstrong

A planet out there will hit us. Or an asteroid. Or the earth’s magnetic poles will switch, making our globe rotate in the opposite direction. And then there’s the Maya, who said the world will end on December 21st.

People ask NASA: Why aren’t you stopping this wayward planet with Sci-fi lasers and bombs? And what about that asteroid? And have you heard about the earth’s changing rotation?

NASA answers: there’s no looming planet, no nearby asteroid. There’s nothing out there hiding behind the moon. And while the earth’s poles can switch, it takes a long, long time for that sort of thing to occur. In any case, it won’t make the earth rotate in a different direction.

And the Maya never said the world will end on December 21st. Their calendars show time extending far beyond that day. The Maya could have believed that we’ll be shifting into a new phase on the 21st though, with the guidance of their plumed serpent god. That serpent could take us into a more peaceful era.

Or: could those other plumed serpents, the GOP, take us into a Christian fever-dream of burning fire? (Did those bastards win? I’m writing this before the election).

This year has been fairly workmanlike and conventionally chaotic. We didn’t have the horror show of an earthquake-tsunami or a devastating oil spill spewing filth before a closed circuit TV. There wasn’t a summer song blasting out of every car window (except some tripe from Gotye about someone he used to know). There wasn’t a Titanic or a Schindler’s List we all had to see. 2012 lacks a “brand.”

The Arab Spring continued, with a new government in Egypt and repression in Syria and Bahrain. The US continued its attacks on Occupy. We stayed in denial of climate change, despite our losing enough Arctic ice in 2012 to cover both Canada and Texas. Perhaps 2012 was like this: if the earth were a balloon, it would be one slowly losing buoyancy and air.

Lauren K. Alleyne writes in Writing from within the War on Women that our attack on women steals from them their “foundational rights, placing in jeopardy our rights to legal, medical and physical safety.” I wrote about the corruption at the basis of 2012’s biggest show trial in Repression’s Watershed.

“But aside from the apocalyptic-prophecy-du-jour,” says Rita Zoey Chin in The Black Wing of Duende “it seems we’re losing our connection to the world on a more subtle level, and by the world, I mean the natural one, the one we came from, the one where, some would argue, duende is born.” Bringing out the duende: poetry, and it’s leading the way in 2012, via the chapbook: “Copy machines made it possible for amateurs to self-publish or to print their friends’ work; computers have enabled a new generation of writers to become publishers. The last few years, in particular, have been good for chapbooks,” writes Ashleigh Lambert in her essay, Slightly Removed From Mainstream Literary Culture. “Art makes the holes in the wall through which we all have the right to pass; and through which we always should,” Alex M. Pruteanu adds in 2012: The Year I Slay the Muse. Again. And perhaps that’s the answer: through that door to culture is our plumed serpent. *

Meakin Armstrong is Senior Editor / Fiction Editor of Guernica. He’s a freelance writer, and a former employee of The New Yorker. Most recently, his work has appeared in Wigleaf, Noö Journal, elimae, and various anthologies. His nonfiction has been featured in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, TheAtlantic.com, TheAlanticWire.com, Time Out New York, and the books, New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg and Museyon Guides Film + Travel North America. He was a 2012 Guest Editor for the DISQUIET conference in Lisbon and has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Summer Literary Seminars. Find him on Twitter at @meakinarmstrong.