Singing REM and I Feel Fine

I talked to my mom on the phone the other day. Always an interesting experience. She will usually tell me about how busy she has been, what her dogs *kids* have been up to and how although so and so or such and such has somehow let her down she has managed to prevail. We all have our coping mechanisms.

This particular conversation led in a different direction. She had been watching a television show on Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce which delved into the upcoming 'end of the world as we know it' posited by the Mayans. Well there is a movie about it. It must be true.

Seems that Cayce would put himself into a hypnotic state and once there would begin to speak. Speak the truth. At first folk would take advantage of him as they asked for lotto numbers and winning horses. Self gain. Cayce didn't like that and so had his wife be the only one to ask the questions. The questions had to be the greater good. Apparently, heads of state and other such important world folk were given the opportunity to ask him questions. His answers were always true. Hmmmm. This process would take a lot out of him but he continued to put himself in this trance up to 7 times per day. Later he died of a stroke but not before relating that the Mayan calendar was right.

The world will shift on its access in 2012 and life as we know it will end. Japan will be gone. The East Coast of Canada will disappear. Rome will fall. Again. My mother continued and mentioned something about Atlantis and a new continent etc. etc. Then she told me that she was sorry if she had worried me. I told her that I wasn't worried. She then went on to say that she was working on a plan to get the whole family together at that time because when the chaos finally erupted she wanted us all to be together because it would be difficult to have contact otherwise. Hmmmm. She was also trying to figure out a way to get my brothers away from the East coast. It was beginning to sound more like she was planning a grand family reunion then preparing for the end of the world. I guess it's difficult to actually plan for the end though eh? Gotta make sure there's enough milk for the coffee.

Ok. 2012 is coming. I agree. Time passes. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Months. Years. Neatly divided. 2012 is over two years away and already the hysteria is beginning. I fear that it will be a very long couple of years as varying camps discuss the end and how to prevent it and/or survive it. I wonder how long it will take before the canned goods are stripped from the shelves, folk start building survival shelters and basic trades classes get overbooked in local colleges.

I also wonder at people's seeming hyped up joyous? elation at the thought of mass destruction. Or even over 'little' destructions. Joyous is the wrong word but there's a feeling of nervous excitement in the air. I've felt it during this current H1N1 pandemic. People are dying. People are getting sick. Yet there is a perverse almost celebratory energy as folk are talking about it, coughing into their elbows and washing their already washed hands. I don't believe that folk are happy that others are suffering but something is odd. Similar to the feeling I had as a child when watching the parade of people who would follow fire trucks and then gathered and tut tutted as walls burned down and bodies were carried away I also wonder if this same feeling could explain the mentality of people who would gather around the gallows in order to witness executions.

I wonder how this whole 2012 thing will pan out. I feel that the lead up will be far more interesting then the 'event' itself.