"Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin; and breastless creatures under ground leaned backward with a lipless grin."T.S.Elliot
"From the sea is where we came (said a lady on the radio last night) and to the sea is where we go..."
About the only jolly tidbit to reach me from the other side of the world so far in this most recent of cataclysmic events is how a BBC News reporter pronounced the TSUNAMI as a ‘TOON ARMY’. I did allow myself a quarter of a giggle at that, so I did. The thought of a countless herd of Newcastle United hooligans running riot 10km inland is enough to reduce any country to its knees.
I recall Roy Chubby Brown making a joke about the last great wave in 2004. Something about looking for his hotel and then seeing it float past him!
Aside from that, there really is nothing much to say or feel, apart from the usual mixture of awe, pity, and condolences. What is alarmingly obvious is how the cost of the economy and the stock market is rather more crucial than the human loss, which seems only to be addressed as a mere afterthought.
The most radical footage I’ve seen so far is a man calmly standing on top of his truck as the wave threatens to smother the motorway. All he can do is watch. It’s impossible, from the helicopter camera, to determine if he is just about high enough to be safe or not. Therefore, I gather, he has absolutely no clue if he will live or die. It’s close, though. It's too fookin' mighty close to be true. We're talking 50/50. We don't see his fate. How much must you pray and wish and cross your fingers in a fix like that? Talk about nail biting. Talk about hair raising...
another wallop from mother nature leaves us reeling, though there's little time to cue the big picture, because after the loss, and the tears, we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off...there's plenty of work on
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