Countdown City

For Adele and Sherman Winters

(43 years)

and

Alma and Irwin Hyman

(44 years)

“Nahui Olin was not the first sun. According to the Aztecs and their neighbors, there have been four previous suns. Each of them presided over a world that was destroyed in a cosmic catastrophe. These catastrophes did not always result in mass extinction; the results were sometimes transformative, i.e., of humans into animals.”

—Meteors and Comets in Ancient Mexico (Ulrich Köhler, in the Geological Society of America Special Paper 356: Catastrophic Events and Mass Extinctions)

“Forever doesn’t mean forever anymore

I said ‘forever’

but it doesn’t look like I’m gonna be around much anymore.”

—Elvis Costello, “Riot Act”