Big Balls of Gas
by Jonathan Penton
It's May the second, 7:30 Eastern Standard Time, and the world is slated to end in less than three days. On May 5th, the seven planets of classical astrology -- the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- will all align around Earth's orbit. The last time this happened was in 1962, in the sign of Aquarius, as in The Dawning of the Age of. This time it will be in the sign of Taurus, and doomsayers, weirdos, and the author of the speculative non-fiction book 5/5/2000 are predicting that the poles will reverse, killing practically all life on the planet. (More conservative astrologers are predicting that things will change in a way that has something to do with money.)
On this Cinco de Mayo to end all Cinco de Mayos, I will be settling down for a nice weekend of camping. I intend to camp in an area just rustic and chilly enough to prevent me from binge drinking, I intend to take lots of allergy medication, and I intend to sleep in a semi-upright position. Other than that, I haven't really made plans for the momentous occasion. Call it the invulnerability of youth, if you like.
I rode on the back of a motorcycle last week. I was chemically altered at the time, and utterly terrified. The chin strap on my helmet seemed to grow tighter and tighter, and I was unable to swallow, leaving me wondering if I was really breathing, or if my internal functions had temporarily stopped in panic.
The horrible thing was remembering how I once considered buying a motorcycle. It would fit into my lifestyle perfectly. I would keep my subcompact, for those tiny fractions of my life that involve my son, and I'd do virtually all of my driving on my bike. I'd be able to avoid rush hour in the HOV lanes. I'd save a fortune on gas and insurance, while looking sexier than I'd ever looked before. I suppose everyone makes plans like that at some point, and I was no more serious than your average bear, but I was really shocked at how much my motorcycle ride frightened me. I was pretty durn certain that I had fucked my last fuck and penned my last poem.
Oddly enough, on the way back, after I had sobered up, I was perfectly cool with riding on the back of the bike. Well, there you have it. The effects of herbal medicines can be unpredictable. I can't say I gleaned any great wisdom from the terror I felt. Not even enough to fill the length of a decent rant. It does seem to tie in well with the upcoming end of the world, however.
Somebody once said (and has been since often plagiarized) that "If the world was going to end tomorrow, I would finish the game." That's cool, it sounds hip and wise. Unfortunately, there is no recognizable game. The meaning of life is not apparent, nor will it be, even in the wackiest of Monty Python films. Poets, from Shakespeare to Scott Wannabee, often suffer from the delusion that their works have a shot at granting them immortality. Since it is exceedingly unlikely that the poetry of humans will outlast the species itself, let alone this eventually decaying universe, I think we can safely say that that's a bad way to hedge your bets. That leaves us with a handful of impotent religions, most of which are now being swirled together by Western thinkers into a pot of, "Well, at least we're all part of something bigger than ourselves."
Remember that on the fifth, when the ice caps shift and the jaws of the Earth open to swallow you whole. It's not necessarily a good or just universe, but it's a universe, and by golly, it's big.
Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.