Waiting For the Big One
Rumi can home last night with the news that a particular kind of cloud was spotted over Tokyo yesterday, and that , according to some forecasters, this heralded The Big One (earthquake) that's supposed to hit Tokyo any time between right this moment and one hundred years from now.
"If they ARE right," she pointed out, "at least we'll be together."
Hmn. Romantic notions of using my body as a human shield to protect the woman I love aside, I'm not sure I wanna be around when The Big One hits. Government forecasts are that 10,000 will die in Tokyo when the quake does inevitably hit. Statistically, those numbers don't much scare me: 10,000 out of a population of 25 million seems like a long shot. I probably have more to fear from the flight I'm getting on next month. Or the pack of smokes next to my computer mouse. Then again, the tremors that do occasionally toss our little apartment like a ship at sea are very unnerving.
The idea that clouds could somehow anticipate earthquakes appeals to my overactive but jaded imagination. In a world where such a thing could be true, then surely other things that seem irrational in this materialist, consumer culture we inhabit could also be true. Like kappa and tengu, and other creatures from children's stories.
It would make the world a more interesting place to live in.
Maybe I'm too much of a skeptic, but I think I'll finish writing lesson plans for Monday's class just in case the cloud watchers are wrong.
But tonight I'll dream of bird-men riding dragon clouds over a sleeping Tokyo.
"If they ARE right," she pointed out, "at least we'll be together."
Hmn. Romantic notions of using my body as a human shield to protect the woman I love aside, I'm not sure I wanna be around when The Big One hits. Government forecasts are that 10,000 will die in Tokyo when the quake does inevitably hit. Statistically, those numbers don't much scare me: 10,000 out of a population of 25 million seems like a long shot. I probably have more to fear from the flight I'm getting on next month. Or the pack of smokes next to my computer mouse. Then again, the tremors that do occasionally toss our little apartment like a ship at sea are very unnerving.
The idea that clouds could somehow anticipate earthquakes appeals to my overactive but jaded imagination. In a world where such a thing could be true, then surely other things that seem irrational in this materialist, consumer culture we inhabit could also be true. Like kappa and tengu, and other creatures from children's stories.
It would make the world a more interesting place to live in.
Maybe I'm too much of a skeptic, but I think I'll finish writing lesson plans for Monday's class just in case the cloud watchers are wrong.
But tonight I'll dream of bird-men riding dragon clouds over a sleeping Tokyo.
posted by tokyoaaron at 5:07 AM
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