Sunday, October 09, 2005

Cold Nature

At a bare minimum, 18,000 people were killed near the Kashmir during a 7.6 earthquake and the series of aftershocks that followed over the weekend. About 40,000 more are wounded.

I remember the 50,000 who perished from the Iranian quake a couple of years ago, and I think about the lethal impersonality of nature and what we may see as its "wrathful" tendencies. It's only comforting to put a face on it, no matter how ugly.

But what is more disturbing is that it simply just is, in this instance the random slipping and breaking along slabs of rock beneath us. Moreover, that there is nothing we can do but help the people affected and wait for the next one to roll down.

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