Saturday 12 November 2011

warnschuss, coup de semonce or disconfirmed expectancy

One should not forget that Europe as a personality or playable character is something ultimately derived from a Greek myth (EN/DE), and not a very happy or pleasant one at that. While there is trouble going on in the lands of the Classics, France too in its capacity as a leader in the European Union’s coregency with Germany in fixing the currency is seeing its woes compounded. A major credit rating agency made known by mistake and perhaps prematurely the downgrading of France’s credit-worthiness. I am sure that the functionaries at such institutions always have such press-releases cocked, especially when it is a real and strategic possibility, and ready, like the morbid job of obituary writers who constantly update the curriculum vitae of celebrities, so their newspaper can be first and timely in case one should leave us unexpectedly.

Still, intention or accident, the damage has been done—for those who put faith in the opinions and prognosis of such offices, and besides sewing doubt in France’s surety, makes Germany more unilateral and obligated. Perhaps France could capitalize and restore the same weighted-credibility with a more modern myth (a strange draw recently featured in Atlas Obscura): the village of Bugarach in the Aude Department, between the Pyrenees Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, is being invaded by thousands, and possibly as 31 December 2012 draws closer, thousands more, because some believe that it will be spared the Doomsday Event, interpreted by one take on a Mayan calendar.
French authorities, however, are doing the responsible thing and down-playing the hysteria, and the agency MIVILUDES (an acronym that translates into something like Mission to Combat and Monitor Cult Deviancy) have been quashing publicity and have the whole area under surveillance. Believers cite the location of the village along the Green Meridian (the line of longitude that runs through Paris and long time rival of the Greenwich Meridian for reference in navigation and world time) and the unusual geography and tectonics of the Pyrenees that makes the tops of mountains here old than their bases as reasons for gathering there. Yesterday, with the confluence of elevens, I was thinking about prophesy and prediction and how strange it seems to try to resolve, synchronize calendars, clocks and time-zones, and I suppose the location of that real-estate is sold on terms as convincing as the judgment of creditors.