By ERIC FRANCIS from Next World Stories, published in January 2009.
So here we are.
Where exactly? It seems like a few people have noticed that in the geography of time, we’ve arrived at a mountain pass in late autumn. On one side is what they are calling over in our Sci-Fi section the “Age of Denial” or maybe it’s the “Age of Fossil Fuel Folly.” On the other — if we get there — is something else.
Astrology and astrologers have their ways of describing the moment we’re in: Pluto in a new sign, two mighty planets are at opposition, and something weird called Chiron is making some big moves in Aquarius. Indeed, we are heading into the most impressive Aquarian alignment since 1962, when the world was at the cusp of another new era. Ours has been gradually forming since 1998, when Neptune arrived and started the process with a little anaesthesia.
The Mayan daykeepers tell us that we are just over 1,000 days from the end of the 13th baktun on Dec. 21, 2012.
Scientists observing the polar caps have their way to describe what time it is, as do geologists looking at oil reserves, the people selling the oil (over and over) and those measuring the carbon in the atmosphere. Politics has its way, too, and it would seem that most people are defining this as a political moment: a new president taking over, apparently very different than the old. That he’s African-American is no small part of this: this inauguration is one of the great moments in civil rights history. A black man will face hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, DC not to demand his place in society, but to take it as the chief executive of our nation. If you believe the polls, even half the people who voted against him feel good about that.
Barack Obama gets my attention for one reason the news hasn’t given a name: we are being presented with a different image of maleness than we’ve seen in quite a while. We are used to Tom Cruise and Arnie Schwarzenegger and guys with guns in both hands who run up the wall and do a flip.