A bit of a blip in
the Mayan calendar
by
Robert LaFrance
It’s easy to see how a mistake could
creep into a calendar. We heard for months – years – about the world's ending on
Dec. 21, 2012 and here we are in mid-January, colder than a witch’s chest and
sort of wishing it had been true. We could have all gone together in a blaze,
or at least a haze, of glory.
I have come to the conclusion that
there is also something wrong with our own calendar, the Gregorian one
introduced to (the future) Canada and the rest of the world in 1582 to replace
the Julian calendar. When I say there’s something wrong with it, I mean there’s
something VERY wrong with it.
No more than two weeks ago I was
sitting on the front porch and sipping on a lemonade while the dog Kezman was
beside me and chewing on a mastodon bone, or possibly a hambone from the pea
soup we had just had for supper. The temperature was twenty-one degrees
Celsius, and there was no minus sign involved. According to the calendar it was
July 25.
As the boxer, looking up at the
referee, said: “Wha’ happened?”
I will take an oath that it really
was no more than two weeks ago, but here we are in mid-January. Wha’ happened?
Time is fleeting they say, but that is ridiculous. And to think of the time I
wasted watching television or women or women on television or sports or just
plain old killing time when I should have been doing something useful. Now I am
forced to do something useful, because it snowed last night and I have to scoop
out the driveway. H. D. Thoreau asked how one can ‘kill time with injuring
eternity’ and I fear he was on the right track. Instead of watching ‘Canadian
Pickers’ on TV I should have been out there picking.
I have strayed off the subject a bit
– nothing unusual there – so I will veer back to it. The subject I was going to
introduce was the fact that a second version of the Mayan calendar has turned
up, in Minto of all places. Some of the boys at the club there phoned me at
3:46 am and woke me up to impart this news. I suppose that they didn’t realize
they would be waking me up at that hour, no doubt miscalculating the time
difference between here and Minto, NB.
It appears that on this newly found
Mayan calendar which continues from Dec. 22, 2012, the world is not going to
end for quite a few months yet. I believe my friend Flug (who was visiting his
sister there) said the new calendar goes to the year 2219, but there was a lot
of noise on the line for some reason – no doubt people shouting their joy at
their reprieve. In the morning I must send an email explaining that even though
the CALENDAR goes to the year 2219, that doesn’t mean that Minto will be there
to see it. And I must remember to thank Flug for the early morning heads-up.
I mentioned Henry David Thoreau,
whose book ‘On Walden Pond’ was the favourite of the 1960s generation. I may
decide to go and build a cabin near a lake myself and then I might be able to
get a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately Flug has begun 2013 with the same amount
of judgment he had in 2012 – and 1995 for that matter – and needs to be sent to
‘a re-education camp’ as the late Chairman Mao Xedong was fond of doing to
those who didn’t agree with him.
Of course I would have to modify a
few of the things that Thoreau did alongside Walden Pond in the 1840s. Rather
than build a cabin out of timbers I cut and carried myself, I would buy a
little camper and place it somewhere close to hydro lines. I would not
cultivate acres of beans, but would buy them at the grocery store, and all that
canoeing he did – well, he was younger. If I can get some sort of satellite TV
connection, that would be good, and I would have books just as Thoreau did.
Probably e-books and books on DvD, but still books.
Yes, I can see all that happening
because being awakened at 3:46 am by a phone call about the Mayan calendar is
something to be avoided if possible. Especially from Minto, a place from where
I have some bad memories. I don’t recall what those bad memories are or were,
but they are definitely bad ones. Hey, I’m 64.6 years old. How can I be
expected to remember bad memories when I have a bad memory?
I will leave you with one more quote
about time, from Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a
banana.”-END-
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