Amazing

A couple years ago I attended Seattle’s Decibel Festival (the local electronic music festival, not the traveling heavy metal one sponsored by the magazine of the same name). In the EMP (now MoPop) Sky Church, giant visual displays moved on the wall behind the performers. I took a picture of this one, which reminded me of the Papago (now Tohono O’odham) Man in the Maze.

In the actual myth, I think the man, I’itoi, created humans and later retired, hidden from men in a cave hidden by the maze. But he is usually placed at the entrance to the maze, and so looks to me like any  other human – a person with a long journey ahead and no idea what they’re doing or what they’re in for.

This modern, electronic man is already in the thick of it. For each of the last two years, the American consensus seems to have been, “Well that sucked, I hope the next one is better.” But each year gives birth to the one that follows, so we can expect 2018 to be a tangled maze we must navigate if we’re going to repair the damage of the last two years. We can count on this year to be “amazing.” I hope some of the good connotation applies as well.