Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Log44: Unspeakable

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html


The February 14, 2011 issue of Time magazine has on its cover, "Revolution, And what it means for the Middle East."  The picture is a worn Egyptian flag silhouetted under a glowing sun and upheld by the nameless apostates.  Their righteous hands carry the taut flag with a violent fervor, as if the flag were Liberty herself.


The news could not be sated by the wildly infectious revolutions occurring all over the middle east and north Africa.


Three days ago, the collision of four separate tectonic plates beneath Japan's eastern front registered an 8.9 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale and caused a tsunami taller than ten meters to decimate Japan.


A village of 17,000 estimates a death of 10,000 from its town alone.


Over the past couple of days, few seem solicitous of the Arab world's cause.


Tragedies like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan militate against the vanity and futility of my prose.


The speed with which the world has turned to Japan--as well as the exigency and alacrity--speaks I think to a deep humanity in all of us.  International social, political, economic quarrels seem trifling when a blink from the world can change the future of humanity on such inconceivable levels.


Listen, watch, and read the news; grieving has not yet begun.  The glib reports might to the uninformed reader demonstrate an unforgiving and inhuman portrait of the landscape.  The nonchalance with which the news broadcasters, reporters, I, or anybody else I've spoken to, has approached this enormity is illustrative, not of our dissolute or immoral nature.


No, it rather speaks to the unspeakable tragedy of this spectacle; the utterly dumbfounding, stupefying, and tragically awesome power of nature; the inexplicable anguish.

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Words to Live By

"Who dares wins." -Motto of the British SAS

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly." -The Buddha

"Don't give up; don't ever give up."
...-Jim Valvano (ESPY Awards speech)

"Persevere, do not only practice your art, but endeavor also to fathom its inner meaning; it deserves this effort. For only art and science can raise men to the level of gods."
-Ludwig van Beethoven (letter to a child in 1812)

"This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
-William Shakespeare (Polonius from Hamlet)

"The time is always ripe to do right."
-Martin Luther King Jr. ('Letter from Birmingham Jail')

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
-TS Eliot (last stanza from 'Four Quartets')

"All things of this world will come to pass. Strive on, diligently." -Last words of the Buddha

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom."
-David Foster Wallace (commencement speech to Kenyon College Graduating Class of 2005)

Enjoy the little things in life. -Yours Truly