Ah, so you think you know a language? It might be so simple in the classroom, but go talk to a native at a noisy bus stop and you realize that, hey, maybe you need more practice. A lot more.
So it is with me, now that I will be heading south of the border again after two decades. I once was pretty fluent in Spanish, but I know how one forgets, and so I tuned into a Mexican soap on Univision last week to boost the ol' language ears. Caray! It was bad enough when the main characters were speaking, but when the "people of the street" talked (as comic relief - there is no political correctness in Mexican soaps) it became like a ...well, a foreign language.
I was starting to get the gist of things, but not fast enough, so I dug out a Spanish-language novel I had bought some years ago to accelerate the process. I found quickly, much to my disappointment, that it was first written in English and published in 2004, and then translated, but the translation is good. Not that it is a high-quality work like, say, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rather - and I chose it for this - it is an apocalyptic thriller based on the Mayan calendar that had the world as we know it ending in December of 2012. It pulls out all the stops: aliens, the birth of evil twins, an asteroid, evil right-wing evangelicals (alas), bungling government officials hiding information, Roswell, lurking dark forces, necromancy, quantum physics - and so on, and I am only on page 70 out of 600 plus pages. And this is only book two of a trilogy, The Mayan Resurrection (La Resurreccion Maya) by Steve Alten. Great airplane and beach reading, really, and it gets to the heart of the conglomeration of the weird and the psychic commonly seen as New Age, that heart being, in a phrase, "something BIG is coming!"
Sure, the world didn't end three years ago, but for those of us who follow such things (like me) that was never the point of the Mayan calendar; the point was, that we are on the cusp of a new age, and who really can deny it? The secular see either a one-world techno-society of the future, or a post-apocalyptic world of smoldering ruins and mutants; the religious and/or spiritual see either a second coming or some kind of spiritual rebirth, or the domination of Satanic materialism (which may lead, then, to the first). For both, though - really, for most of us - we know something big is up. Melting polar ice caps, nuclear arms in the Middle East, overpopulation and water shortages, death of the oceans, expanding theocratic or secular imperialistic dictatorships, the death of traditional cultures, the loss of moral values, the End of the West ...the list goes on, and unlike events in our novel, few think that these possibilities are the product of kooky, LSD - laden minds. Rather, one or many or all are real or could become real, leading to changes that are apocalyptic in nature and hard to process.
So it is that this blog has often presented authors, many of them serious scholars, who think about our evolution or lack (and destruction) thereof. Given the very real possibilities and probabilities that our future holds, one cannot call such thoughts mere idle speculation. We all know, with no great amount of thought, that we are in a crucial time. Something's up, for sure, and for many it is simply too painful to think about for long. Everything now is coming down, from forests to glaciers to cultural and religious truths, and we know our world will be nothing like it is now, both on the natural and human level, within 50 or even 20 years. We were made for great changes to occur over centuries or eons, but now we must confront them in decades or less.
It is no wonder, then, that we look to the Mayans or to millennial scenarios, for nothing, really, is that odd compared to what is actually happening on the ground. There is speculation that the aliens that Steven Alten employs for his books are psychic projections of our fears - and some might say, are mere images like nightmares. In the end, though, it doesn't really matter; the changes our own priests of science and politicians are telling us are coming are every bit as profound - well, almost - as the Second Coming or an alien invasion. Cities underwater; suitcase A-bombs in New York subways; millions and millions of immigrants from impoverished wastelands flooding what remains of the prosperous nations; drug use, broken families, the Caliphate, and so much more.
And all of it is created by us. But how, when almost no one wants what is coming? How has everything gotten so out of control? Is there any wonder that we think of international conspiracies or angels and devils or UFO's? Our historical progression is following a template that was created somewhere beyond our wills. We seem to be puppets in the hands of something sinister, something of massive and frightful power that is bringing us towards - what? How could we NOT then hope for salvation, in science, in hero politicians, in gods, in UFO's?
I do not look for salvation in the blood-soaked culture of the ancient Mayans, nor in the dreams of politicians and dictators. UFO's seem a better alternative, but really, since it all came from us somehow, isn't it up to us somehow? If it is all our fault, and where it came from within us is unknown, shouldn't we get to know a greater part of ourselves? For whether the universe were created out of love or disinterested curiosity, we were born with a will to survive. One would think that, then, this original instinct would still exist in us and call out, collectively, to do something, the right thing, if we could look deeply enough.
For many who have done this, they tell us that the universe IS made from love, and that this is our home, and I believe them. This is the outside force that is at once also inside and can save us. But even the scientist has to puzzle over our predicament, and must in the end admit that the solution is not in new techno-discoveries - although those can help - but in self-discovery. If we have dug this hole ourselves, we should also be able to fill it. Ah, aliens would make it so much easier! FK
So it is with me, now that I will be heading south of the border again after two decades. I once was pretty fluent in Spanish, but I know how one forgets, and so I tuned into a Mexican soap on Univision last week to boost the ol' language ears. Caray! It was bad enough when the main characters were speaking, but when the "people of the street" talked (as comic relief - there is no political correctness in Mexican soaps) it became like a ...well, a foreign language.
I was starting to get the gist of things, but not fast enough, so I dug out a Spanish-language novel I had bought some years ago to accelerate the process. I found quickly, much to my disappointment, that it was first written in English and published in 2004, and then translated, but the translation is good. Not that it is a high-quality work like, say, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rather - and I chose it for this - it is an apocalyptic thriller based on the Mayan calendar that had the world as we know it ending in December of 2012. It pulls out all the stops: aliens, the birth of evil twins, an asteroid, evil right-wing evangelicals (alas), bungling government officials hiding information, Roswell, lurking dark forces, necromancy, quantum physics - and so on, and I am only on page 70 out of 600 plus pages. And this is only book two of a trilogy, The Mayan Resurrection (La Resurreccion Maya) by Steve Alten. Great airplane and beach reading, really, and it gets to the heart of the conglomeration of the weird and the psychic commonly seen as New Age, that heart being, in a phrase, "something BIG is coming!"
Sure, the world didn't end three years ago, but for those of us who follow such things (like me) that was never the point of the Mayan calendar; the point was, that we are on the cusp of a new age, and who really can deny it? The secular see either a one-world techno-society of the future, or a post-apocalyptic world of smoldering ruins and mutants; the religious and/or spiritual see either a second coming or some kind of spiritual rebirth, or the domination of Satanic materialism (which may lead, then, to the first). For both, though - really, for most of us - we know something big is up. Melting polar ice caps, nuclear arms in the Middle East, overpopulation and water shortages, death of the oceans, expanding theocratic or secular imperialistic dictatorships, the death of traditional cultures, the loss of moral values, the End of the West ...the list goes on, and unlike events in our novel, few think that these possibilities are the product of kooky, LSD - laden minds. Rather, one or many or all are real or could become real, leading to changes that are apocalyptic in nature and hard to process.
So it is that this blog has often presented authors, many of them serious scholars, who think about our evolution or lack (and destruction) thereof. Given the very real possibilities and probabilities that our future holds, one cannot call such thoughts mere idle speculation. We all know, with no great amount of thought, that we are in a crucial time. Something's up, for sure, and for many it is simply too painful to think about for long. Everything now is coming down, from forests to glaciers to cultural and religious truths, and we know our world will be nothing like it is now, both on the natural and human level, within 50 or even 20 years. We were made for great changes to occur over centuries or eons, but now we must confront them in decades or less.
It is no wonder, then, that we look to the Mayans or to millennial scenarios, for nothing, really, is that odd compared to what is actually happening on the ground. There is speculation that the aliens that Steven Alten employs for his books are psychic projections of our fears - and some might say, are mere images like nightmares. In the end, though, it doesn't really matter; the changes our own priests of science and politicians are telling us are coming are every bit as profound - well, almost - as the Second Coming or an alien invasion. Cities underwater; suitcase A-bombs in New York subways; millions and millions of immigrants from impoverished wastelands flooding what remains of the prosperous nations; drug use, broken families, the Caliphate, and so much more.
And all of it is created by us. But how, when almost no one wants what is coming? How has everything gotten so out of control? Is there any wonder that we think of international conspiracies or angels and devils or UFO's? Our historical progression is following a template that was created somewhere beyond our wills. We seem to be puppets in the hands of something sinister, something of massive and frightful power that is bringing us towards - what? How could we NOT then hope for salvation, in science, in hero politicians, in gods, in UFO's?
I do not look for salvation in the blood-soaked culture of the ancient Mayans, nor in the dreams of politicians and dictators. UFO's seem a better alternative, but really, since it all came from us somehow, isn't it up to us somehow? If it is all our fault, and where it came from within us is unknown, shouldn't we get to know a greater part of ourselves? For whether the universe were created out of love or disinterested curiosity, we were born with a will to survive. One would think that, then, this original instinct would still exist in us and call out, collectively, to do something, the right thing, if we could look deeply enough.
For many who have done this, they tell us that the universe IS made from love, and that this is our home, and I believe them. This is the outside force that is at once also inside and can save us. But even the scientist has to puzzle over our predicament, and must in the end admit that the solution is not in new techno-discoveries - although those can help - but in self-discovery. If we have dug this hole ourselves, we should also be able to fill it. Ah, aliens would make it so much easier! FK
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