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10 January 2005 - 15:27 Yeah, I've been sick. Ill. Poorly... Imagine, if you will, your worst hangover and then multiply it by 10 and extend it by 3 or so days. Yep that was me. Like being kicked in the danglies by a horse All pretty insignificant in light of world events, but it's an explanation as to where I have - or have not been in the last wee while. I find it difficult to get my head around the whole Tsunami thing. And I mean I accept it - I know it happened, but there are things which I don't understand, things where I need answers where I think there might not be answers... Not the physics and geographical reasons for how it happened, but more the scale and global impact. It surprises and to a large degree reassures me that, in this age of desensitivity, I find myself being able to be shocked. And slightly more than before. Case in point? 9/11. Shocking. Horribly, horribly shocking. But through it, there was reason. Innocent people died because someone out there wanted them to. And while it's a terrible, terrible thing, it gives some kind of clarity to the whole mess. Tsunami? Natural disaster that grows and unleashes it's terror in hours. I read somewhere that those waves were speeding across the ocean at the same speed as a jet fighter. The irony of course, especially in this day and age, is that if a host of jet fighters WERE speeding towards a country's shores with the intention of causing harm, they would have been brought down probably well before they got close. Perhaps it could have been predicted but it wouldn't have changed anything. Nothing at all. There is still nothing we could do about it. No Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck going to the center of the earth to stop the evil...um... nature. We might have been able to clear a few resorts and save a few people, but I suspect it would have been a painfully small margin. 150,000 is an unfathomable number to me. Especially when linked with numbers of people. I have been in a crowd of 75,000 at Donington Monsters of Rock festival, but even then, I couldn't see everyone. The size of that was too large to comprehend and absorb. I localized. The geography that was affected is a massive scale. A massive scale that was hit by a wall of water which, when I close my eyes, I STILL can't picture. I picture Hawaii in Surf Season, with the latest hot dude, riding a wave as big as his house and then going down in it and emerging unscathed. It's funny (and not in the 'ha-ha' way) that even after 9/11, The Washington Sniper and every IRA attack that ever was, I never felt truly vulnerable. They were somehow man-made decisions, and preventable, and in some twisted way, made sense to someone, somewhere. They made me angry and invoked all kinds of emotions, but never TRULY made me feel out of control. There was no-one behind the Tsunami. It just happened. And a lot of people died. A whole lot of people. Not even targeted people. Just people. No religion, no philosophy, no ideal. And minutes and hours after it was over, human bombs were exploding. People were being mugged and murdered throughout the world. As if there was a reason.
   My life is rated NC-17. What is your life rated? |
