The Eternal Clock. Photo by Robbert van der Steeg, courtesy of Creative Commons

I hate New Year’s Eve. Just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood. All this build up just to watch the digital clock click into a new twelve-month cycle. All the TV stations showing the year in review, with inane summaries delivered by bobble heads. All the drunk kisses at midnight from people you wouldn’t think of kissing at any other time.

So I’m sitting here at 5 pm on New Year’s Eve frowning at the love of my life. “Why are you pissed at me?” he wants to know. I’m not really pissed at him but I’m crashing under the pressure to DO SOMETHING. I feel guilty that all I really want to do is stay at home, paint, and drink red wine. We have no red wine and he’s not offering to go buy any so I guess we have to GO OUT and DO SOMETHING.

I’ve already turned down a dinner invitation from my dear friend and her family. I don’t want to inflict my NYEM (New’s Year’s Eve Malaise) on them. It just doesn’t seem right. My husband suggests a movie and then finding a pub. I just can’t see myself faking gaiety with the drunks. But hey, we need to DO SOMETHING.

My attitude to New Year’s Eve dates way back to childhood. When I was 12, my grandmother committed suicide on New Year’s Eve, the same night that had been her wedding night in happier times. What a night to depart the earth. How could we ever forget even if we wanted to?

After my grandmother’s death, celebrating New Year’s always seemed counter intuitive. This was not a night of happy endings. It was a night of sadness. As I got older, I got stuck babysitting brats and watching Guy Lombardo while the grown ups got drunk. Later on in my teens, I also got drunk on New Year’s Eve but I never got happy on this annual holiday of hullabaloo. I only went through the motions, a slave to the Gregorian calendar’s turning of the year. Tick, tick, tick, clunk.

My husband doesn’t know how to deal with me so he disappears to the dungeon to his computer and guitar. I look at my cat who has no idea it’s New Year’s Eve. Doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. He’s obsessed with chasing his tail. But isn’t that what we are all doing in this cycle of years, chasing our tails around the calendar, hoping at some point to beat time at its game? Oh bloody hell, now I’m really talking rubbish. Time to DO SOMETHING.

I give in to my guilt. When my husband comes upstairs, I agree to go downtown to eat Tibetan food. If anything can lift my spirits it is surely eating potstickers while thinking of the Dalai Lama. Then I may go see a movie with the now-dead Heath Ledger in it and think about death. After all, 2009 is in its death throws. It’s been a hell of a year. Good riddance to bad rubbish. It’s time to DO SOMETHING.

PS: I just found something to get excited about. Tonight, on the edge of 2010, we are being treated to the second full moon this month, known as a blue moon. Now my night has meaning!

Just got back from seeing Avatar, the latest movie from director James Cameron. Now, Cameron is known for the great effects and plenty of action. Think of Terminator and The Abyss. I wasn’t expecting profundity, but that’s what I found tonight.

On one level Avatar is typical blockbuster, supersized with amazing animation. But it’s subtext is pure shamanic journey, from the world tree to the reverence for the universal mother, to rites of passage and animal guides.

The story takes place on a distant world called Pandora where corporate mining interest come face to face with wondrous 10-foot-tall creatures called the Na’vi. The Na’vi are highly reminiscent of Earth’s own indigenous cultures, intimately connected to the land, the animals, the energy and the ancestors. They worship a mother goddess called Eywa.

The Na’vi live in a world with trees taller than many of our skyscrapers, mountains  that float and flora and fauna that shimmer with colour at night. It is Eden, but just as in our world here on Planet Earth, there are those who would put profits before people and they are willing to destroy paradise for it. To that end, the company that is so aggressively mining Pandora has the military, a thinly veiled and effective poke at the USA’s protection of corporate interests in other countries.

During the past year, I have been learning more about shamanism. For me, Avatar was familiar in that it strongly resembled a shamanic journey in non-ordinary reality.

Yeah, I know this is Hollywood and I don’t want to demean my own practice by comparing it to computer generated odysseys. On the other hand, I applaud that Cameron is bringing an important message to people who might not otherwise care to learn about shamanism. Avatar is clear — we are all connected, to each other and to our planet, whether it’s Earth or a moon called Pandora.

James Cameron said that “the Na’vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are” and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans “represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future”.

I will write more about Avatar after I’ve had time to think about it more (and get some sleep) but I am inspired and still a bit in awe of this movie. For three hours I sat there in my 3D glasses, exploring a fantasy world, thinking of our own world and wondering what is going to become of us on Planet Earth if we don’t find the strength and spirit to protect our planetary home.

I have no idea what will happen on December 21, 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends. Maybe the world will end. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the poles will shift? Maybe the Earth’s axis will wobble? Maybe.

I do know there are lots of people making money out of 2012 and the shelves in bookstores are filling up with tomes on the end of the world as we know it. On the corner of a major intersection in Victoria where I live, a bedraggled guy holds a sign warning of the wages of sin and the end times. Funny, I thought I saw the same guy holding the same sign in Vancouver in 1970.

I am not going to be fooled again. Back on December 21, 1999, I remember counting down the minutes to midnight with friends and family, waiting for the grid to go down as Y2k ticked closer. I had stocked up on mushroom soup and toilet paper. I might still have some of those soup cans.

Last month Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson reported that Mayan Apolinario Chile Pixtun is weary of questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly ending on December 21, 2012.

“I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff,” said the Mayan elder.

Now, Not Myth

Here’s what bugs me — the world as we know it is ending — we don’t need to wait for 2012. Change is definitely happening and it’s hard to deny it. Some things that were, are no more. Some things that are, will soon be gone. It’s called climate change, or global warming.

Yet instead of really focusing on what we must do to slow climate change, our mass media focuses on Mayan myths and some ‘maybe-maybe not’ event with Hollywood profit power — 2012 starring John Cusack.

Here’s what we know for sure that is not movie myth:

• The snows of Kilimanjaro are melting.
• Polar bears wander the arctic, hungry, as their traditional hunting territory literally melts.
• Warming waters in the shallow oceans have contributed to the death of about a quarter of the world’s coral reefs in the last few decades alone.
• Greenland’s ice sheet is melting. The amount of ice melt during the summer of 2007 was the largest since scientists first started making satellite measurements of the ice in 1979. According to climate scientist Konrad Steffen, the amount of ice lost in 2007 was “the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile deep covering Washington, D.C.”
• An oxygen-depleted dead zone the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington, reports Kim Murphy of the LA Times. It will probably appear there each summer as a result of  “evolving wind conditions likely brought on by a changing climate, rather than pollution,” according to Jack Barth, professor of physical oceanography at Oregon State University.

On his site Global Issues, Anup Shah has dedicated significant time and resources to providing a comprehensive overview of climate change and other issues affecting our Earth. His message — we can’t wait to act. He is not alone in his opinion.

“We have to do it this year. Not next year – this year,” Al Gore at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. “The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”

Is climate change real? Ask the people of the archipelago nation of Maldives. Eighty percent of its chain of 1,200 islands is no more than 1m above sea level. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change is forecasting a rise in sea levels of at least 7.1 inches (18 cm) by the end of the century. That would mean the people of the Maldives, all of 396,000 of them, will have no home, no country. Climate change will claim it and the sea will bury it.

Recently, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet donned scuba gear for an underwater meeting to focus global attention on the threat of climate change. The cabinet signed a declaration calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. The declaration  will be presented before the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark in December.

“We are trying to send our message to let the world know what is happening and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change isn’t checked,” Nasheed said. If urgent action isn’t taken according to Nasheed, “We are all going to die.”

It’s not the kind of thing you usually hear from a president of a nation.

It’s not the kind of thing you want to hear.

Indeed, denial is easier and so human — an effective but self-defeating shield against fear and despair. I believe we turn to denial because we really don’t know how to cope with a problem of this scale and few people with power seem to be offering real leadership. Certainly Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper isn’t, but then he has oil to think about, right?

Sometimes I think global warming is akin to a fever whose purpose is to fight off infection in a body. Have we polluted the body of the Earth to the point of infection?

I do believe this planet will survive. Will the polar bears? Will the whales and fish? Will the coral reefs? Will we? The ancient prophesies haven’t been very definitive on this point. Stay tuned.

U2’s music has been with me through a lot of my life — births, celebrations, deaths, dances, epiphanies. Their music takes me to the same place I go when I’m writing poetry — the almost-undefinable, magical place where the poetry gets lift off and seems to write itself.

I’d like to think I’m different in some way from all the other U2 fans, but the truth is I’m just one of millions, unlikely to ever to meet Bono.

But last night in Vancouver’s BC Place, I did get to go up on stage with U2 as a small part of the band’s amazing 360 tour for their latest album No Line on the Horizon, which is fast becoming one of my favourites.

My story starts when I applied to volunteer for One.org, the global advocacy organization and campaign. Co-founded by Bono and other campaigners, One.org’s mission is to fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. The campaign has helped focus much-needed world attention on Africa’s plight in particular.

About 30 of us were chosen to volunteer and to spend the hours before the show asking concert-goers to add their voices to One.org’s two million other members (no, there was no money involved). As a special surprise for the volunteers, One’s energetic volunteer coordinator Matt announced we would not only get to watch the show from inside the circle, we would be in the show.

The plan was for us to join many of U2’s crew onstage during the song “Walk On”, an evocative, haunting song dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, a 64-old Burmese woman who has been under military house arrest for 14 years. In 1990, she was elected Prime Minister by 59% of the vote but her detention by the junta stopped her from taking office. She is still imprisoned.

We were to walk out onto the outer ring surrounding centre stage, each holding up a mask imprinted with the likeness of Aung San Suu Kyi — then turn and face the audience.

As we got ready for our entrance, I could not believe I was about to face 50,000 people. Then I heard the opening notes to “Walk On” and I held back tears. The song, with its lyrics “…all that you can’t leave behind…”, brought back the entire past year to me. I had watched my Mom die of lung cancer, taking with her the only thing she couldn’t leave behind — love. At least I truly hope that’s what she took with her.

I stepped onto the stage thinking not only of Aung San Suu Kyi but also of my Mom, now free of the prison of her pain. I felt like she was watching me there. And, ok, I thought of my best friend and my brother who were sitting at the back of the stadium beside the seat I would have occupied. There was a wee bit of guilt there for me.

Walking on that stage was a moment I’ll never forget, with the bass and drums thrumming, the clear, soaring sound of Edge’s guitar and Bono’s voice, so magically familiar.

I couldn’t see the band, but I briefly experienced what it must be like to see through their eyes — to look out at thousands and thousands of people with their hands raised in solidarity to human rights and the oneness that is possible when hearts and minds unite.

As we left the stage (trying to walk straight on the catwalk with the masks still held to our faces) I caught a glimpse of Bono in the shadows. Then it was over and we were back by the stage for the rest of the concert, having the time of our lives and rediscovering why these guys are the world’s best band.

Thank you to One.org for an amazing experience. I would have gladly volunteered anyhow (but, wow, what an unforgettable surprise!). One.org has shown that the Internet is a powerful tool for peacefully holding politicians accountable  and raising awareness of some of the most critical issues of our time. Protest in our times is alive and well —  on the web as well as in the streets.

Talking to people before the concert last night and signing them up was an enlightening experience in itself. People open up about what they cared about in the world, and what their hopes and fears about the future were. We are all more alike than different.

It’s easy to be cynical but it’s far more courageous to be hopeful, so thank you, U2, for the music and the message.

Our great group of One.org volunteers (me and Chris are second and third from the right).