100 % Review Forum December 21st 2012 (obviously,..

    January 1, 2012:       Ah that's it, finally here we are in 2012. Long-awaited pivotal year, much feared (as mocked too !!), from the famous movie- paranoid disaster, based on a Mayan prophecy, 'bout this supposed fateful date of December 21. Personally, I do not believe it ... the world will go on, as always, in its frantic, deleterious and self-destructive race, unfortunately. I do not believe in these pangs of birth, the sudden horizon swaying, scheduled humanitarian destiny. Moreover, if any end of the world happens, it must be in our heart. This should be an inside revival, not an outside one, Man is the problem, he is also the solution. It's all about heart tendency. If hatred's bound to happen, love is a birth. Anyway, i do not believe it !! Swampy rosary rattlers and other angry gurus of any kind, may stir up the crowds and sound the alarm, i would not be lured into the trap. Absolutely not !! For millennia, we are stubbornly told, such major events (via among others, Jehovah's Witnesses, not very Catholic), without us noticing the slightest change...this is getting ridiculous. I no longer believe in that stuff, these eschatological opiums. Only hot air …   I know we will watch this year, my wife and myself, go to completion, anyway. The rest is just twaddle ... Especially, one of my evangelical friends once told me that the Bible stubbornly says  that no one knows the day nor the hour. Who'd have thought ... It will be a year like any other, a year of light and shade, of vice and virtue. An old-fashioned year, as always. I know i'd cut across that specter date, reaching the shores of tomorrow. I can even picture myself, mocking this inept prophecy, buried beneath the ruins of history, along with my sweet honey, on my native island. Yes, i can even picture myself the day after next, on December 22, still in Martinique, with my sunny wife, flower of islands, caressing the sky on a bed of tenderness. If hatred's bound to happen, love is a birth. And i'm reborn each day in her radiating love. She's my safeguard, and i'm her guarding fan. She was born out of dreams and azure. At her birth, the rainbow had devoted itself, to swaddle her in iridescent nappies. Her skin's a shadow, but her heart's a light. I married her, ages ago ... And if one day my sweet heart should leave, mine would stop beating.     March 22, 2012 :       We are already in March ... Spring's new shining sun is taken away, and the inherent vicissitudes of Life run their river courses. Here and there, the media keeps bringing up the same recurring theme of the eschatological date which is close at hand. TV, press, radio and web, the beast is on all fronts ... Everywhere, in every corner of the globe, preachers of the Apocalypse begin to swarm, stiring up the hypnotized crowds getting drunk on glimmers, hanged from their misty lips. Some stubbornly preach in metros, in squares, others peremptorily in the street, until the hours run out. A real crazy thing ... The earth becomes day by day, overcrowded with prayers, like perfumes of ether, being themselves fragrant with lights. And dark gleams, blind the horizon of grasping hearts.   Meanwhile in France, presidential elections are accompanied by naive persons, and are in full swing. And peaks grow worse, and the invectives fly away, under the shady wings of insults. Only the election of Marine would hurt me and lead me to believe an imminent end of the world. For me, there would be no greater disaster than seeing this shadow reign in the light of a throne, obviously wearing its crown of thorns. France would then become a pitfall land as a dark sub France. Anyway …      August 15, 2012 :     While i was striding along General De Gaulle Boulevard, going to the big market of Fort de France, a man coming towards me, approached me casually, with a face as dark as his makeshift clothes. Time had patiently made his hair dusty, dug furrows on his face. The moment he was close to me he told me, in a gravelly voice:    ‒the end's coming up, young man… be prepared!   ‒Oh really? And how do you know this?  , i told him.  ‒We can do nothing, against the inherent power of destiny. Be worthy and strong, son. He retorted.   ‒but what are you talking 'bout, Sir?    At that saying he went away with no answer, no turning back, as a wandering shadow. I stood there for a few moments, pensive, watching him move away, until his disappearance in the shadow of “Cimetière de La Levée”. Bewildered, i kept on goin', towards the market, my thoughts shrouded in mist of questioning, repeating in my mind what had just happened, with this Oh, how strange, chance encounter.   Back from the market, i shared this encounter with my islands' Sun, my wing of the blue. She was in the kitchen, preparing cod fritters and coconut sorbet for dessert. She told me not to take it into account, due to some "special" year in which we live.   ‒There have always been visionaries of that kind, being apparent, since the beginning of time. These are birds of ill omen, forecasting things, that will never come true, prepared to do anything to frighten feebleminded people, credulous and paranoid. Forget it, my love, this will never, ever affect us. Thank God… They both set 'bout laughing… ‒it's obvious, how much more incredulous than me can you get, darling. He proudly stated.   December 20, 2012 :     D-Day – 1 : All over the world, public places are taken over by visionaries, turnin' themselves into places of worship, where the preachers on all sides harangue and proclaim their moralising sermons. Religious sandwich board men also flooded the streets of the world, with a writing on their signs mostly sayin', an immediate incentive to repentance. Some of them even read the Bible during their march. Eschatological refugees hit by an extreme paranoia, exacerbated, decided, quite unexpectedly, to abandon their own body, leaving posthumously their filth remains on the bereaved asphalt. Especially in Mexico, where the rate was significantly higher. Because of culture and tradition. As a matter of fact, the first affected persons, 'bout this specter prophecy, were unfortunately the direct descendants of the Maya.   Sporadically, angels flyin' in all this global uproar. A lead weight seems to be hanging from the air. Everything seems like being on the edge of a major event, on the edge of a new day. In the media, the beast shows up everywhere. The end of the world is relayed by most. Even the winds seem to hold their breath. Here and there, tears of anguish, irrigate the land of despair. And in the sky, dark clouds are rising, fertilized by sighs. Some, more advised, managed to "be bunkerised with fear," six feet under ground (as in the village of Bugarach, in Aude), while others almost die laughing! The pallor of some, makes the good time of the others. It's sad to say ... Many heads of state, including President Hollande, have even taken the trouble to make formal speeches on TV, judging the situation somewhat "worrying" so as to appease a segment of the population, in a total paranoid turmoil. Regardless of skepticism in the greatest number, giant telescopes weigh up, here and there, the horizon of an impassive sky, like sentinels, to prevent any possible accidental intrusion of meteorites or other celestial calamities. Just in case ... In recent days, the sky calls the shots.   And here i am, with my beloved, bewildered spectator of all this eschatological jumble, serene despite everything, or even sometimes derisive, as for this inexplicable and pathetic scramble ... All these mountains, will come to precious little, for sure …   December 21, 2012:     This was the D-day ... It was 8:45 am. The dawn had just awaken, leaving its shadow cover. Everything was virgin, like in every morning. I was there, near my beloved, on a bed of Heaven perfumed with alcoves. The serene dawn greeted us in its sunny arms, dressed in virginal dress. I awoke the first ... Strangely, i was sensing again the time weighin' heavily on ... I even heard the clinking of my internal clock, ringing endlessly. Everything seemed to come alive faster around me, abnormally. As if dust covered in sand, built up again on my life like when I was an orphan soul, like a wandering ghost, roamin' at the crossroads. Even the clock, stopped its nagging running  during the night, at 2:22 am, amazingly. In short, all this was very strange …   But regardless, I was in bed with my beloved, still embraced in the arms of Morpheus, under the golden sheets of silence. I stayed close to her, without waking her, contemplating the dreamlike beauty of her face, where a light smile was captured, in the trickle of her mouth, like a trace of our love on her silken skin. I gazed at her as one looks at a painting, like a narcissus contemplating the reflection of its soul, or as a dream contemplatin' the moon. I caressed her soul with my watchful eye... Thinking of finally wakin' her with a morning kiss, my mouth, like a butterfly, landed amourously on the flower of her lips, so that her eyes can finally bloom. I therefore intoxicating her casually with tender kisses. What remained shockingly, despite everything, ineffective, because the lock of her eyes didn't deign to open. This puzzled me initially, but a fleeting thought gave me a faint smile: surely she pretended to sleep, enjoyin' these kisses all the way. She clearly didn't, after many languorous kisses. Her visible inertia, seriously began to leave me puzzled, until breaking in me, a hint of anxiety. It was unthinkable and impossible that she remains impassive. A shade of mist began to dissiminate in the ether of my thoughts. On an incipient anxiety, I began to talk to her, to call her by her first name, while slightly shaking her. Without success ... She was not responding, as fainted or worse. As the minutes were running, i could see a moonlight look appear over her night  skin. Fearing the worst, i instinctively took her pulse and checked her respiratory breath, placin' my cheek next to her mouth. Everything seemed to indicate she was not breathing any more. Her heart stopped beating, and mine was pounding wildly ... Oh, misfortune seemed to have set its heart on me ... Not wanting to succumb to my emotions, i hastened to call the emergency services. While waiting for them, i set to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation, learned during a first aid course, a few months ago.   About 45 minutes later, at the "Zobda Quitman" hospital, dubbed "la Meynard", the verdict hit me like a ton of bricks: the night had definitely fallen into her heart ... My angel, my heart and soul, my life, could not be resuscitated, despite the countless repeated attempts of emergency services. Her heart had dropped, and mine has stopped ... I was watching all our tender moments pass before me. My thoughts were separated in a deafening silence. I could not hear anything, i could not see anything. From each of my tears, a river of sadness was born. On this day so "special", so covered, relayed, left, right and centre, to all media hungry for sensational, the mountain came to precious little. I was expecting all sorts of "weird" things, but certainly not this. And i considered seein' this year end in the shadow of her wings, and being with her by 2013 ... From my cloud, i was just dreadfully dumbfounded, into unfathomable depths... Meanwhile in the world, some were holding their breath, expecting any kind of sporadic and simultaneous calamities, while others quietly led their lives like nothing had happened. But these things went secondary for me ... I had just lost my love, and any other thing was no more important, nor interesting. And fate, made me drink its chalice down to the lees, intoxicating me with bitterness.   And the day came to an end in the darkness of my heart ... .No eschatological ghost was looming before me. In this special day, everything took place as i'd always imagined, nearly : my wife was not.   December 22, 2012:     Here i am after this dreaded day, so contested, and so mocked too, still living in my body, although dead in my soul. Alone, like a heart in a shroud. Devoid of my soft light, now I'm just a shadow in my every step... My tears became a bitter source, where fruitful mists drank to death. Yet nothing happened on that day ... No, nothing! No eschatological wind blew from heavens.   Life continued its course, and its inherent vicissitudes. No asteroid spit on the face of the world. No mushroom cloud picked from the ground, by the dark hands of dusk. No tearful massive tsunami, no seismic tremor of fear. No angry volcano, spewing its incandescent hatred. Besides some endemic spiritual heatwaves, nothing new under the sun ... It was the mess of natural verses. Birds of ill omen were still saddled with all sorts of names, and came out a little battered and bruised. Except the famous couturier Paco Rabanne, who, against all odds, got his fingers burnt from his former erroneous predictions, had joined the level of eternal skeptics, lest the sky falls. No unfathomable ghost, springin' out of the secular horizon. Some excess of paranoia here and there... nothing more! The end of the world was postponed  again. Yet, in that fluvial day my beloved was not. Yet, on that fateful day, fate cut the wings, it once graciously gave to me. It hit me like a ton of bricks on that deadly day, such a definitive   decision. Yet, on that winter day, my angel flew away, to other climes. How strange and disturbing is punctuating the end of a burning love, by a heart failure. Oh, fate must be a paltry writer …   Nothing is more apocalyptic than the loss of the beloved. Since then, each dawn is a dusk. Every breath is a sigh, and every minute is a torture... The clinking of my internal clock, hastened to catch all lost time, where eternity got us, distraught. My life's only a tear of mists, in which my heart drowned. On that day of December 21, 2012 ... the end of the world ... has actually occurred!                 This short story, translated by DIDIER PISTOL, was copyrighted on July 22 2016, at “www.copyrightfrance.com”.