Back on October 27, 2021 ("Natural Disasters") I wrote about trying to get away from using that particular term. In a world without human beings, tornados, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, etc. would simply be "events", wouldn't they? When these phenomena happen "naturally" (ie, without human intervention like fracking), they might temporarily harm animal populations and habitats, but there would be no one there to classify them as disastrous, per se. That is our human-centered assessment. Collapse of human infrastructures, the loss of human life, and widespread dislocation are disasters to individuals and human communities. But they don't happen in order to hurt humanity. In a way, they are not too dissimilar to a human sneeze, cough, or hiccup, in Earth's body. Pressure has built up under the surface and must be released...
However, the coverage of this latest earthquake has definitely been far more painful to watch than I remember, and I was trying to figure out why. Suddenly, it hit me. So many of the videos and pictures seemed to be coming from the phones of individuals on the scene. Not professional journalists, but people who might literally have run for their lives with their smartphone in hand or in a pocket, taking videos as they ran, or as soon as they got into the street. I don't remember, in the past, the feeling of literally being there, of feeling the terror so acutely, the pain of people under the rubble, the children holding out their stocking feet near a small fire. Similar imagery of war still keeps me at more of an emotional distance, since I get caught up in wondering why humans deliberately hurt each other. But here, the human tragedy is in full, random, and sudden immediacy. (The reporting we used to see "in the olden days", pre-cell phone cameras, was after-the-fact, only we didn't really know the difference. The buildings were already down, the damage done.)
Perhaps it is fanciful, but I wonder if earthquakes have the capacity to break open our psyches just a bit. Things have been raw and rocky the last few days. Sunday was the 22nd anniversary of my mom's death, and it stood to reason that I would experience a strange, childish reaction to an invitation to go out. (Long story short, I could hear my mother saying, "Go out and do this, Elizabeth. How are you ever going to meet people?" But COVID fears and other factors left me so on the fence, I finally chose not to go. I truly didn't seem to be able to ascertain what I wanted to do.) A few days ago, I also went through a few hours of sheer terror, thinking about what it would feel like if "all my dreams came true". I didn't understand why it was evoking terror, not joy. And more dreaming. This morning, I awoke from the first dream I have ever had about my decade at Time Inc., an anxiety dream where a pile of old-fashioned letters about four feet high was awaiting my attention. I woke up quaking, literally, that I couldn't do the job properly.
All of these concerns seem so insignificant compared to the road ahead for the people of the quake. But from halfway around the world, I still want to say, I trust Mother Earth, and believe that this event was nothing personal. I bow down in awe to the power of Nature, I celebrate the energy constantly moving under the skin of this planet, and I quake knowing that there is a wisdom so much greater than ours, passionately moving the stream of life forward.
