8.9

As many of you know, there was an 8.9 magnitude earth quake in Sendai Japan, followed by a seven meter tsunami that devastated the country. The wave has been steadily making its way across the Pacific, anticipated to reach as far as my own home town in Southern California. As I type this, an advisory is still in effect for much of the region. The water is receding in what is called the "trough" of the tsunami. Powerful after-shocks continue to shake Japan, with magnitudes of above 5. 

This comes after a mere matter of weeks after a series of other bizarre, benign, and terrifying events. Mother nature has been angry in Australia and New Zealand. Birds and fish have been mysteriously dropping dead from Alabama to Redondo Beach. Political turmoil has been erupting in Egypt and Libya. With a quick survey of these events, the forecast looks grim. It comes as little surprise, it has even been frightening a great deal of people, people who are grasping desperately for a way to explain this surge of negativity. It feels like Apocalypse Fear-mogering has been mounting for years, and is perhaps near to reaching its apex. People are buzzing, swinging back and forth between worry for the victims, and worry for their possible impending doom of Biblical Proportions. Armageddon is the New Black, and it disturbs me. Not because I have an aversion to the idea of Armageddon, but because I feel it is misguided and unnecessary. If God is sitting up in the clouds pointing his angry trigger-happy smiting finger down at us, so be it. We mere mortals have little chance of escaping a fate of that gravity. What we do posses the strength to do however, is band together and be noble in the face of this tremendous adversity. Rather than cowering from death, we need to embrace life because we are breathing now. Instead of fearing the unknown, we need to look up and out and at the throngs of people needing assistance right now. We're a universal nation, a universal brother and sisterhood, and we are in crisis. 

I don’t know if it’s the product of being raised around too much fear mongering news or if it’s the inundation of Holly Wood disaster flicks, but people seem oddly fascinated by disasters. Disasters, the real ones, have become just another more compelling extension of reality TV. They get high off of their own morbid curiosity. I just overheard some people outside remarking how excited they were about the tsunami advisory in effect and how they were going to go do yoga on the beach and watch the waves. I mean, Darwin would be proud, really. But I digress….

Walking around town there have been crude hand-made stickers on telephone poles and mail boxes warning of the “Rapture”, the “End of Days”. Sun bleached, peeling, neglected. They have been sprouting up like paranoid weeds for weeks. The mix of fear and anticipation seems almost sexual. It’s odd. Really, really, odd. If we want to be honest however, people have been warning about the end of days since…the beginning of days. It’s not really new. I’ve just never seen it become quite as sensationalized and widespread before. I don’t know if, in the last few months, I have been able to make it a full twenty-four hours without hearing some sort of paranoid or humorous jab to the effect of, “Hey, the world’s going to End. Sorry God?”

I suppose the bottom line is, the end of the world is always a threat. Beyond a threat really, but an inevitability eventually. No one can really say if we in this generation will be around for the end of the world, but I do firmly believe it will happen one day. That’s always been a risk. Hell, I remember in Elementary School being told very matter of factly that things expire, and one day either our resources will dwindle or the sun (being a star and not a battery) explode, and life on Earth will end or be largely destroyed. I think this was told to us while we were learning about the Dinosaurs. Then years later learning about Pangea, then the Ice Age, yadda yadda. I don’t really think Planet X is going to punch Earth in the face, and I don’t really think God is going to be zapping the Faithfuls off to the Heavens tomorrow; but everything does end. Tides rise and recede. Empires are built and fall. Everything is cyclical. We just don’t like to face the reality of that, because it brings into light our transiency, and ultimately our mortality.

It’s the way of nature. Even the religious nuts kind of had it right; Armageddon doesn’t mean “Call Tom Cruise We are all gonna dieeee!!!”. Apocalypse actually means “unveiling”. Kali, the Goddess associated with Death is also associated with eternal energy and life. Destruction is all a part of life, the less pretty side of it, maybe. I just think people should simmer down a little bit. Kind of like how mopey assholes in high school used to always remind each other that, “Hey, our cells are deteriorating and we are dying every day”, so is the whole goddamn world. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. It is just life, and there is not much we can do about it. We try to prolong life and evade death (or the evidence of it) in medicine and cosmetics, but we can’t really do that with nature.

Anywho. That’s my sleep-deprived nonsense rant of the day. I think in light of the disasters happening recently, focus needs to be shifted; we need to worry less about how this might be “the end”, whatever that means, and we need to worry more about just helping our fellow human beings in the here and now because the need is so great. No one knows how long our stay in this world is. I think if anything, it is our duty to make that stay a productive one. Help each other and live your life. Now I’m going to bed, finally.