Apocalypse now

2012 is, according to the Mayan calendar, the year the world will end. I’ve known this since last century—as a child I was interested in ancient civilizations even more than I was interested in watching “Muppet Babies.” But it’s only lately—as “2012,” the disaster movie, is in the offing, and as the date itself draws near—that I’ve become intrigued by this prophecy. But intrigued isn’t the word.

I was taking a train from New York to Boston last weekend for a jaunt. I had a meeting in Boston, a city even less appealing for an appointment than Samarra, at 9 a.m. on Sunday, and didn’t feel like staying in a hotel or on a friend-of-a-friend’s air mattress. When I left campus for Penn Station, it was like midday in my new sleep schedule. I had bought coffee for the train, even, at Westside Market. While there, I ran into a friend who asked me what kind of pre-prepared fried chicken would taste best, and a girl wearing a leg cast, a short jacket, and a lime-green thong. By the time I had boarded the subway to Penn Station, I wondered whether it was a full moon. Outside Penn Station, as I looked for the Amtrak platforms, a man yelled expletives into his phone, then said “I love you. I just wanted to see you.” A bus stop ad for a History Channel special read, “WHEN WILL THE WORLD END?” It was 2:15 a.m. or so.

The train ride was uneventful.  I slept not a bit, wandering to the cafe car for cranberry juice and watching a DVD I’d brought and YouTube videos I’d pre-buffered. I felt like death by the time I came upon Boston, one of my least favorite cities. Any place with but three things to recommend it (two of which are sports teams) finds itself having to brag constantly about these entities. Indeed, my Russian cabbie pointed out Fenway Park. It was one of the few things he said to me, other than “This rain is shit.” I thought I recognized his accent from my trip to Prague, and asked him where he was from, “originally.” “Russia,” he said, emphatically ending our conversation.

After my appointment, where I’d had to smile and talk about myself for a couple of hours, I got on the Boston subway to head toward home. I had been asked what I wanted to do with myself after college, and I jokingly answered “Supreme Court Justice.” 2012 was sneaking up, anyhow. Why make long-range plans? A woman with a large backpack blocked my way onto the subway—after excusing myself twice, I pushed past her. “Say excuse me, and I’ll move! Rude!” she cried. She had to be Bostonian—all of the self-absorption and importance of a New Yorker, with none of the self-awareness. Afterwards, a man took my hand, told me he had HIV, and asked me for money for an AIDS walk, which I declined to give. He got into a fight with a bystander after that. I wished I had given him money, maybe. Wet and tired of talking about myself and thinking about things I ought to have said to the backpack woman, I slept all the way back to New York.

Then again, as much as I hate Boston, I have to admit that New York may be no better. When I woke up, back in New York, I remembered something I’d seen at Penn Station before my departure. A man with a rainbow-striped umbrella and a rolling suitcase was staring intently at me, then came up to me. “Can I ask you a sort of weird question?” he asked, standing uncomfortably close. I stood–I had been sitting on the floor, listening to two siblings nearby talk about their mother’s excommunication from Catholicism—in order to defend myself, from something. “Shoot,” I said.

“Do you know where my mother’s apartment is?” he asked. I told him I didn’t and went to the bathroom. When I got back, he was talking, placidly, to himself. I asked the police officer in the station, who was escorting two drunken girls away from the bathroom and back towards the Long Island Railroad, to help this man out—maybe direct him towards a shelter. The man with the rainbow umbrella had to find this apartment, and I had a train to catch. “I got a lot of things to do, buddy,” said the police officer. It was only after watching two homeless men fight in Boston, after leaving New York—this time for just a day, maybe soon for longer—and after thinking about 2012, that this upset me. I’m not sure when I’ll next have to leave New York. I’m still not making plans beyond the given day, or hour. Forget 2012, everything is ending now.

Daniel D’Addario is a Columbia College senior majoring in American studies and English. He is the managing editor of the Columbia Political Review. The Unbearable LOLness of Being runs alternate Mondays.