waking up to a different world

click here for Video



last night i went to bed early-ish after making some George Eliot flashcards and working on some squares for the afghan. i slept off and on through the night, waking often with various of the brood dealing with sore throats and asthma. 
and then an early wake-up call saw me logging into yahoo this morning, to be greeted by a world vastly changed. 


8.9 points of devastation, whirlpools, tsunamis, fires... and more to come in the ensuing hours, i'm sure. 


i do not have any personal friends or family in Japan. i am not anxiously waiting for news of a loved one. but i can't help joining in the world's grief today. and contemplating the things that i'm sure we all are, in the face of events like these... how we walk through our lives with the false sense that we have some kind of control. that we can plan our little plans and dream our little dreams, and that somehow the universe will comply and we and those we love will all be safe and happy forever. 


and there is nothing wrong with dreaming. or planning. or doing the best we can where we are. but when we are faced with the enormous and mind-blowing power of everything we CAN'T control... and how little it would take (less than a minute!) to bring your life, your plans, a city, a state, a nation to dust and rubble; it tends to put things into perspective. or, rather, to grab us by the lapels and shove our shocked faces into a huge, steaming pile of perspective. 


and it isn't exactly something you can process. and so today, amid the small vagarities of life - of cleaning up messes, of doling out the medicine, of cooking and homework and naps and sibling squabbles - i will be quiet. giving place, internally to the tragedies that rage around us, feeling small and frail-ly human, grieving with my global brothers and sisters, and watching, with sadness, with pain, and with prayer and hope, above all, as the world shakes itself to pieces. 


for some info on the event, and on what is still unfolding, check out some of these links:


Tsunami projection map
Video of the whirlpool - let it continue to play, and you can see more of the video coverage coming in. 
Video  of skyscrapers during the quake
these pics  from The Atlantic
The daily what
and Follow @acarvin on twitter for coverage


** update - another quake has hit Japan... preliminary measurements say 6.6.
watch this:
live blog from Japan