60th Anniversary of Hiroshima
“When it turned out that I, an average Joe, was successful in making a device from easily acquired materials that could annihilate millions, I didn’t feel pride in accomplishment. There was a sense of immense sadness and dread and I buried my head in my hands for an eternity.”
“I feel certain that in our lifetime, we will suffer a mass destruction of humanity as a result of such a detonation,” the curious middle-aged amateur tinkerer muttered ominously into the camera.
Those were the last words I recall hearing before drifting off on the couch. I wish I hadn’t heard them. A chill snaked up my fetal-curled spine as I strived to shut out the reverberating thoughts.
It had been a moody time, days drifting listlessly by in the aftermath of the tsunami in SE Asia. “Death toll exceeds that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined” the headlines hinted. The names were all too familiar – Sumatra, Phuket, Phi Phi, Kerala - the experience sadly not, digesting it as I was, through the cocoon afforded by a news anchorman and a TV screen. My ex was on a plane just about to arrive in Phuket when the first wave hit. The pilot turned around and landed in Kuala Lumpur instead. She and I had planned to see each other over the holidays. Had I gone, might we have flown out the day before? It might have been that we’d go diving the next day. Instead, we’re both back to our busy distractions on opposite corners of the world. I eased my conscience by uncharacteristically sending off $100 to one of the active disaster relief NGOs.
The real noose of guilt was the absence of real relief from this malaise through the joys of daily life, for example in sunny Santa Monica. What right did I have to be unhappy? Did I secretly want to be there – in Aceh - in the midst of the pandemonium? It felt like 9/11 all over again, when my parents - reversing earlier sentiments - gave thanks to the fact I was in faraway Lusaka, and not asleep in my Chambers Street apartment watching the flaming towers through my bedroom window. Then, while riveted to CNN from the living room of my former classmate’s home, I’d felt a pang of inadequacy. Like I had let my mates down in their time of need. They would have been at our office round the corner from the stock exchange, no doubt dealing with their own panic. And here I was, oceans away trying to see if my building was still standing through the rapidly panning lens of the CNN camera. I should have been there. It was only right. And I wasn’t. And now it happened again. I wanted to be there in part because I might as well not be here. Paradise seemed like it had wasted a precious berth on me.
And now this. Someone I might sit next to on a bus, announcing his success in constructing a nuclear device out of easily obtained materials.
London and Sharm El-Sheikh feel mortally close. This seething heaviness and its attendant influence must subconsciously be one of the more defining forces of our time.
“I feel certain that in our lifetime, we will suffer a mass destruction of humanity as a result of such a detonation,” the curious middle-aged amateur tinkerer muttered ominously into the camera.
Those were the last words I recall hearing before drifting off on the couch. I wish I hadn’t heard them. A chill snaked up my fetal-curled spine as I strived to shut out the reverberating thoughts.
It had been a moody time, days drifting listlessly by in the aftermath of the tsunami in SE Asia. “Death toll exceeds that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined” the headlines hinted. The names were all too familiar – Sumatra, Phuket, Phi Phi, Kerala - the experience sadly not, digesting it as I was, through the cocoon afforded by a news anchorman and a TV screen. My ex was on a plane just about to arrive in Phuket when the first wave hit. The pilot turned around and landed in Kuala Lumpur instead. She and I had planned to see each other over the holidays. Had I gone, might we have flown out the day before? It might have been that we’d go diving the next day. Instead, we’re both back to our busy distractions on opposite corners of the world. I eased my conscience by uncharacteristically sending off $100 to one of the active disaster relief NGOs.
The real noose of guilt was the absence of real relief from this malaise through the joys of daily life, for example in sunny Santa Monica. What right did I have to be unhappy? Did I secretly want to be there – in Aceh - in the midst of the pandemonium? It felt like 9/11 all over again, when my parents - reversing earlier sentiments - gave thanks to the fact I was in faraway Lusaka, and not asleep in my Chambers Street apartment watching the flaming towers through my bedroom window. Then, while riveted to CNN from the living room of my former classmate’s home, I’d felt a pang of inadequacy. Like I had let my mates down in their time of need. They would have been at our office round the corner from the stock exchange, no doubt dealing with their own panic. And here I was, oceans away trying to see if my building was still standing through the rapidly panning lens of the CNN camera. I should have been there. It was only right. And I wasn’t. And now it happened again. I wanted to be there in part because I might as well not be here. Paradise seemed like it had wasted a precious berth on me.
And now this. Someone I might sit next to on a bus, announcing his success in constructing a nuclear device out of easily obtained materials.
London and Sharm El-Sheikh feel mortally close. This seething heaviness and its attendant influence must subconsciously be one of the more defining forces of our time.
posted by jngah @ 3:54 PM
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