In which I reveal the reasons for the name of this blog. and talk about some other stuff, probably.
When I studied in Granada, all my classes were taught in Spanish, and at the very beginning of my grammar course we were learning how to talk about time -- "how long since," "how long until," etc. For homework we had to construct sentences using these phrases and then we went around the room and each read one of them.
I was drawing a creative blank while working on the assignment, most likely due to the fact that I was starting it five minutes before class, and wrote a lot of trite, uninteresting sentences -- "I have been in Spain for a month," that sort of thing. But I managed to come up with one that had a glimmer of promise, and that was the one that I read in class.
"How long until the apocalypse?" is the rough translation of what I meant to say in Spanish.
But I changed a crucial A to an E, and it came out as "When do I become the apocalypse?"
Which is still technically correct grammatically, but that didn't stop my teacher from having a bit of a field day. My name for the rest of the semester became Apokalipsis. And not just to her, either! Other kids picked it up and I would sometimes here, "Oye, Apokalipsis!" in the streets.
My teacher never learned my real name, and had trouble passing back my tests because I didn't write "Apokalipsis" on the top of them. Sometimes she would slip and call me Atilla, the nickname a friend of mine in the class had adopted around the age of 13, and a few times suggested that we could shorten my name to Apako, or maybe just Paco.
The name grew on me, but that's not the only reason I chose it for this blog.
...
The word apocalypse get wrapped up in most peoples' minds with the book of Revelation from the Bible, and the prophesies in there about the End Times, and all that, even though it doesn't appear anywhere in most English translations. In pop culture and the general consciousness, it seems to have gotten connected to Armageddon, which appears in Revelation as the battlefield for the final battle between good and evil. Most people tend to think of the terms as sort of the same thing -- Armageddon will occur on the apocalypse, or the apocalypse will occur at Armageddon or Armageddon and the apocalypse will go out to lunch together, decide that it's entirely too difficult to spell their names and subsequently destroy existence as we know it.
We've got Apocalypse Now, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, X-Men: Ages of Apocalypse, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, even Ninja Apocalypse, not to mention dozens of rock bands named after its various misspellings, and zillions of Christian websites extolling prophesy and imminent destruction.
If nothing else the word conjures up images of a complete, rapid and catastrophic change. After the Apocalypse, nothing will be the same.
It's a provocative word, for sure. But it didn't start out as being the sort of word one would use for a summer blockbuster.
In Spanish, the book we call The Revelation to John is called John's Apokalipsis, and the two words mean roughly the same thing, an unveiling, a revealing, an epiphany. My cousin Jon happened to touch on this a while back. It may seem like a small thing when compared to the fiery destruction of the earth, but really, even the tiniest revelation has the ability to turn your whole world on its head. A revelation, an apocalypse, is a breakthrough to a new sort of understanding, a destruction of an old reality. It could change everything.
My birthday also happens to be on January 6th, the Day of Epiphany (also known as the 12 Day of Christmas), which doesn't mean a lot of the USA, but is traditionally celebrated as the day the Magi came to visit a young Jesus. So here's a revelation: I was born on Epiphany, and later christened as Apokalipsis. Now I don't really think that means a lot, but I do think it's kind of cool.
And it's more or less where the name of this blog comes from.
Also, I'm in a class this semester studying apocalyptic literature, and I've always sort of been fascinated by the idea of the End of the World . . . it could come any day.