A tragedy so far away, no tsunamis here...

How does one comprehend the magnitude and scale of disaster that has struck half-a-world away? In places that are only vaguely familiar to most people at best, poor places, places beyond the pale of the prosperous civilized world as it were?

Almost as if their grief was no grief at all, as if they had no developed sensibilities to feel grief and pain and devastation, but such was their lot, eternal misfortune.

What did Freud say about Nature (or the Law, whatever, do not remember) being partial towards some and vicious towards others...

So yesterday here in New England the chief concern, as interpreted by some of the local new channels was the local weather. The "blanketing" by snow of New England, how some New Englanders woke up without power and heat as a result of the snowstorm, but also how much fun it was to have all that snow all around you...

True, how true. Rain is always so enjoyable when you are inside a house, watching the water pouring down, the trees swaying in the accompanying storm, the darkened skies rumbling with thunder and streaked by the occassional lightening...

Yet, imagine being the poor family in the thatched hut that fears for its very shelter as the rain continues to pour down, fears of local floods, displacements, losses, life itself...

A great tragedy there, somewhere out there, in lands used to misery and destruction, to Malthusian corrective actions that periodically and arbitrarily decimate populations from among those that chose to multiply indiscrimately; but here, far away, in a New World, in a world which witnessed a grim tragedy three years ago which was a trial by fire, few ripples if any of that trial by water, of those great waves that snuck up in terrible roars and heavings and swallowed whole entire villages....

reminds me of Mary Oliver's poem:

“Beyond the Snow Belt”

Over the local stations, one by one,
Announcers list disasters like dark poems
That always happen in the skull of winter.
But once again the storm has passed us by:
Lovely and moderate, the snow lies down
While shouting children hurry back to play,
And scarved and smiling citizens once more
Sweep down their easy paths of pride and welcome.

And what else might we do? Let us be truthful.
Two counties north the storm has taken lives.
Two counties north, to us, is far away, -
A land of trees, a wing upon a map,
A wild place never visited, - so we
Forget with ease each far mortality.

Peacefully from our frozen yards we watch
Our children running on the mild white hills.
This is the landscape that we understand, -
And till the principle of things takes root,
How shall examples move us from our calm?
I do not say that it is not a fault.
I only say, except as we have loved,
All news arrives as from a distant land.