Vesuvius

I just came across a 2006 Livejournal entry of mine in which I shared some song lyrics I'd written and had long since forgotten.  I had no refrain or chorus but I'd still like to do something with it. In this day and age it seems apropos:


Vesuvius:

I am the mushroom cloud that leveled Nagasaki
I stood on the shores the day Atlantis sunk
I'm the windshield of Diana's Maseratti
I'm the first of the locusts and last of the crops
What is it that causes such unrest?
over-sexed and beating on your chest
bred to destroy everything that's left
an all consuming black hole when at your best

I am the collapse of the tower of Babel
I was aboard space shuttle Challenger that day
the first thread that began Rome's unravel
woke up bright and early one morning in Pompeii
there's no reason to ponder the day you die
no constant fear of impending doom
there's no changing the future, don't bother to try
the day of the fifth moon is coming soon.



Sufjan Stevens released a song by the same name on 2010's The Age of Adz.  It's pretty cool.  Here it is.

In Summation...

For a good portion of my life I'd been fascinated by all things related to the end of the world.  The end of humanity or the ultimate end of the universe itself.  I still am, to be honest.  This being the eve of a date that's been resounding in my head since a pre-teen is pretty damn monumental.  Of course, now being more informed than I was as a conspiracy theorizing youth, I haven't the least amount of anxiety about what tomorrow holds. Maybe even a decade ago I believed that some great calamity would befall mankind.  That we might be wiped out or the Earth itself could see it's final day at the whim of some celestial happenstance.  But I know it's not going to. I'm going to sleep soundly tonight and I'll only dread the coming snow storm that's predicted to hit Ohio in the afternoon.
Don't get me wrong; I would be absolutely delighted if we were all wiped out tomorrow. Nothing would make me happier. And it's not completely some selfish woe-is-me outlook.  I don't believe there would be anything better for this planet than a lack of humans.  And it's not totally a bad deal for us either.  I mean, come on. No matter how good you have it, do you really have it that great?  Consider the alternative. Living out the rest of your life, regardless how much longer that may be, and dying alone as we all do. Leaving behind loved ones and liabilities. But if we all went out at once in a grand hurrah, everything tied up with a pretty bow, what could be more fortunate?  We should be so lucky.

Alas. None of this is going to take place. The 'Mayan' doomsday prophesy, as it's been adopted in recent decades, actually pertains to Aztec creation lore in which the creation and destruction of world has taken place several times, and as time is cyclical in their mythos, will happen again on the day of the fifth sun. The Mayan long count calendar simply marked this date as the end of their cycle.  In our equivalent, a new years celebration. But, who knows.  Maybe the sun will swallow us whole.  Maybe All the bees will die off at once.  Maybe patient zero will develop a cough.  There are a lot of things that can happen in 24 hours.  But if you insist on counting the minutes until the apocalypse, the Maya home turf is in Central Time. Make sure to keep this song on repeat for the full 24 hours for maximum effect.

Australopithecus

     Even the smartest among australopithecus was just a monkey.  So who am I to think that there is anything I can accomplish which will exalt me to any greater height among my genus?  One cannot transcend his make.  Much like the great australopithecus, broad-shouldered and erect, my only purpose is to spawn.  To contribute my essence to the gene pool the same as any virus that wishes to replicate until it overwhelms it's host.  And what does it benefit a species to breed beyond it's means? Why do we recklessly and unapologetically fuck ourselves into oblivion? 
     The virus doesn't wish to kill it's host.  If that's what happens then it's only the price that's paid for the chance to create it's perfect self. All the virus wants, all that it's ceaseless replication is hoping to achieve is the next great leap.  The iteration that perhaps outwits our antibodies.  The strain stronger than any antibiotic we can throw at it.  So was Aussie's ultimate goal to create me?  I'm hard pressed to believe that I am the end product of any assembly line.  No.  We breed for that small glimmer of hope of one day creating our paramount.  The one shining example of humanity that justifies all of our existence. Our failures.  Millions of years in the making, the child that is our absolution. 

     Certainly the gap between the most useless and deficient of australopithecus and it's champion specimen is far smaller than that of modern man's, so yes, we are moving in the right direction.  The system is working. The question is will we spawn our golden child before we've killed off our host?