Friday, January 9, 2009

Happy New...Yeah

HAPPY NEW…YEAH …RIGHT!


Well for whatever it’s worth… A Happy New Year to you and yours.
I know it is a tad late, considering that we are already some ways into 2009, but better late than never.
Over the years, I have often wondered about the perennial fuss we all make of the incoming year. Typically there is a sense of expectancy about the coming of the New Year with the consensus being our collective expectation that the New Year will be better for us than the preceding one.
As I grow older and perhaps more cynical, I have given more thought to this hypothesis and now have new dimensions to ponder. Considering the fact that truth to tell, there are many cultural variations of the timing and significance of a “New Year.” Chronologically speaking we are caught in the warp of the Georgian calendar, really nothing more that an arbitrary milestone in the space-time continuum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
Even so, I suspect we all need a psychological or even psychic cut-off point that signifies the end of an older order and the beginning of a new, something like the life-death-life cycle of the proverbial Phoenix. And so, I also have to ponder the meaning and importance of the New Year, especially “this” New Year. For me and my ever wandering mind, always flittering from one seemingly disconnected node to another, always seeing and seeking patterns, always connecting the dots, the transitive significance of 2008-2009 is of global proportions and more. The easier proposition to ponder is of course the global economic down turn, the climate crises, wars, poverty, disease all framed within the prospects of hope and change embodied by America’s (World’s) President-in-waiting, Barack Obama.
In this respect, I fear the new year will me much like the old, an admixture of crisis and hope, hope and despair, the usual Ying and Yang of our lives.
But consider these other scenarios totally out of the radar of sensible, balanced, grounded and reasonable folks, unlike myself. Many years ago, I visited Tikal, one of the remarkable archeological remnants of pre-Columbian Maya culture and civilization and was introduced to the Mayan Calendar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikal
Not to want to bore with my understanding of this intriguing chronology, I was fascinated by one aspect of their cosmic time keeping, the year 2012: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm
In a nutshell, according to the Mayans, the World as we know it is scheduled to end just before Christmas 2012, which leave just two years for you all to bequeath your worldly possession to me. You wouldn’t need them after 2012 after all.
The other apocalyptic thing I stumbled upon is the story of the discovery of a huge black hole four million times the diameter of our Sun, near the center of our galaxy, just 27,000 light years away… wow… too close for comfort… way too close. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7774287.stm
I shared this factoid with my life long buddy, my brother Chris Coker and we both gave that knowing look of “Great…just another thing to worry about this new year”
So as you contemplate this New Year, spare a thought for these other important bits of information you might have missed out. Just add them to your worry list this year.
And oh…yeah, Happy New Year!

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