Eight Point Nine

After a night of disturbed dreams in which I kept losing track of time and arriving late at the exam centre (I had those same dreams last week) I indulged myself and my study guide (the book, not a person) with a nice soak in the bath (chapter 1 - it's a long one) and then shifted to the red couch (chapters 2 and 3). I only paused this morning's last minute revisions for my Financial Regulation exam (chapters 4, 5 and 6)  to have some breakfast. We turned on the television for the morning news. And there it was, that terrible apocalyptic footage from Japan. Him: "I think maybe we shouldn't watch this. If you think it's going to distract you..." Me: "No no, it's fine, leave it on."

It wasn't really. Fine I mean. What a terrible thing to have happen, those poor people, and me eating my Dukan galette like everything was perfectly normal. Because in my life here in London things were normal - other than my sudden awareness that something had gone terribly wrong on the other side of the world, in a country I have never visited. Such large scale appalling destruction. And no one to blame. No hate figure. No tyrant, no terrorist mastermind. No one to claim the horror as their own. It is what it is: humanity caught in the giant machinery of our planet's inner workings. Like Chaplin's character in Modern Times except not funny. Not funny at all. A tragedy of Biblical proportions in the second decade of the 21st century.