Tsunami: The Real Event and Its Television Counterpart - Which is Worse?

I walked at the shoreline today and looked at the water out there, deep and blue.  It looked agitated and unsettled.

Or maybe it was me.  I'd been up last night watching television, CNN, to see what the latest news was about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  All of it showed massive movements of natural forces on a scale seldom seen ever before.  Giant waves swamping whole towns, big buildings being shaken as if each one was in its death throes, swirling gyres of foaming water in a bay, massive quantities of cars, houses and buildings smashing and tumbling on the back of an angry-looking invading tide.

Who knows if the buildings and cars witnessed in the maelstrom contained living people and pets.  It is all grim and horrifying and in some ways fascinating.  People are talking about having no idea about the force of nature, seeing it in real terms for the first time in their lives.  People are asking if this shows an upward trend in significantly destructive natural events, considering Australia's huge flooding storm, New Zealand's destructive earthquake, Chile's massive quake last year and Haiti's devastation.  We have witnessed it all, again and again, as television brings us into the maw of each and every natural disaster on the planet.  Our collective anxiety and unease is rising.  We are eyeing that Mayan calendar that ends in 2012 with widening eyes.  Surely there must be some significance to this, a sign that The End Is Near.

In my opinion, we are victims of our intense need to know everything all at once everywhere, now.  Years ago, news was gathered and dispersed over a longer period of time.  We found out about events over a longer period of time and the media used were still photographs, written eye-witness reports, stories.  Eventually, film became the medium we depended on, but there was a time gap and a psychological filtration of information produced by that lag time that we don't get anymore.  Television cameras took over and real-time broadcasting began to impact us in startling ways.  Censorship, or as they said then, editing for content and the impact the news would have on its viewers, was a prime consideration.

Television grew more widespread and sensationalism rose with its popularization.  Currently, television and cell phone cameras are nearly completely unedited and the push is to obtain dramatic images to show as events are happening, all over the world all the time.  We don't have time to reflect and learn from the events that happen in our communities in meaningful ways; other events distract us away and interfere with the possibility of recovery and development of wisdom.

People wonder why they're anxious.  They wonder why kids are hyperactive and distractible.  Really?

Could it be that we know so much about things that cause harm, that we know about every crime committed in our country every day, that we hear about negative events on a continual basis, that we see massive destructive events as they are happening from 100 different angles, that we have proved that there is no hope beyond 2012?  All that?  You hear it all on the news every day from a few million televisions perched ubiquitously on every wall in every room wherever you go all day long.  Do we really want to live like this?  Why?

I am one person.  I know Japanese people and love them, especially one because she was my exchange student for two months, and I will never forget her.  I so hope she is safe.  The inundation of news, the barrage of statistics and facts about everything in the world is too much.  I have to edit it to what I can cope with.  I think, for the sake of all our sanity, we need to think about the impact of constant news.  It's a tsunami in its own right.

Night Noises

Just when you think you're doing okay, that you're faultless and were meant for the movies, God laughs.  Only, I have come to believe that God's laugh comes disguised as the rumbling, echoing night noises that humans make during sleep.  Yes, the creative power of the universe invented human nasal passages, larynxes and esophagi vulnerable to the vibratory effects of deeply inhaled air while sleeping serenely.  Snoring and other barnyard noise production is a humbling experience that may or may not happen to everyone.  One thing I can tell you is that if you snore, you usually don't hear yourself.  And that is a very good thing.

As a nurse who worked on the night shift for a few years, I checked patients' rooms on rounds.  If I heard regular breathing and the equipment in the room was humming along normally, I was satisfied.  Snoring was good as it indicated normal sleep that was restful for the patient, and I went on my way.  Choking, gurgling, gasping and no sound at all caused a little bit of concern, and I checked further just to be sure.  Apnea was no laughing matter, an extreme condition that had to be remedied and monitored.

Our unit was on an upper floor of two stories with the lower floor's lobby visible from the nursing unit.  The hospital is architecturally unusual and seems more like a hotel in certain areas than it does a hospital.  One night, after I had done my initial assessments and hung IVs, I was back at the nurses' station to chart on each of my patients.  The unit was relatively peaceful and quiet, and each of us was sitting at a computer catching up on doctors' notes and writing our own for the work done so far.  In the distance on the main floor there is a large indoor fish pond with a fountain that provided a peaceful white noise of flowing water that everyone enjoyed, just loud enough to really soothe tired spirits.

I was sitting at my computer and heard a loud rumbling noise I hadn't heard before.  It was stopping and starting at regular intervals, and I attributed it to mechanical things working somewhere out of sight.  I went on with my work and didn't pay much attention.  It continued.  It got louder and took on a more ominous quality somehow.  We began to glance up every once in a while as it was certainly a more unusual kind of a night noise.  The sound was low, rather like a large motorcycle revving in the distance. I supposed it was possible that I was actually hearing a motorcycle outside, but it seemed like that would have been a pretty obnoxious thing to do, rev your Harley at 2 AM at a hospital.

Two of my nurse cohorts and I stood up together at last after we heard the sound crescendo and reach a level we could call a roar, and it seemed to be coming up through the floor and through the walls from a neighboring unit.  We called Engineering and asked what they were doing downstairs that was causing all the noise.  Nothing going on, they said.  We all got up and rounded on our patients and came back to the nurses' station feeling mystified. Our eyes narrowed, heads turned, ears pricked. The sound reverberated everywhere.  It was hard to locate and seemed to be everywhere.

I walked slowly from my station to a point nearer the fountain area and listened.  I leaned over the balcony and listened some more.  Then I found the culprit and couldn't believe what I was hearing.  A large man was sleeping on one of the couches in the lobby below, lying there like a rag doll someone had dropped from above, snoring in a way that, had it been recorded, would have set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records.  He was doing what many people do at hospitals:  Visiting a loved one overnight and taking a nap, totally useless to the world and the person he was there for.  I watched him for a moment and wondered why his teeth didn't shake loose from their sockets and his skull develop cracks for the immense sound he was producing.  I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm so glad I don't snore like that."

Last night, deep asleep, I heard a loud awful noise, an embarrassing noise that only a mythical creature like a dragon could have produced.  It was a deep resounding snort that probably cracked our window and sent small animals running for cover.  It woke me up as well as my husband who yelled, "Oh my God!" He described the sound being akin to a culvert vacuum cleaner.  How romantic, how lovely, and oh how humbling.

A Fourth Dimension: Imagination

As if arising from the echoing darkness of metal gutter pipes, a sudden din of raucous crows resounds along streets and off of fences. A cat creeps, hoping to go unseen.  The birds have spotted her and sound the alarm.  Gulls join the bedlam and shriek in exaltation.  Then all is silence; the panic subsides.

I step into an exhilarating quiet blanketing my still-sleeping town, outside where I feel the breath of cool dawn air.  It is damp out here, but arid of bustle and distraction.  It is a world into which my dreams stretch, transfiguring time and space.

The crows croak to their cohorts to make way for me.  They are tricksters with eyes in both worlds, dark feathers rustling like silk.  My mind lingers in the fourth dimension of altered mind where color and shape become emotion and spirit.  I am a marionette, a spirit doll, jerky and then smooth.  I walk and notice my walking.  It pleases me to stride like this.

I think:  Don't think; feel.  

I am unsullied by weariness or disappointment.  I am an instinctive creature, a prowling cat myself, a tree, a gust of air, not yet mere human.  I am moving quietly, I am loose, light, still softened by sleep.  My eyes see, my spirit feels, my body follows its own rhythms, walking.  I am in a sleeping town that will awaken and then change the way I can move and see, ensnare me in humanness.  I have time in which to breathe and move.   I still inhabit the in-between spaces where dreams prevail and the sternly vigorous demands of the working day are as yet unprovoked.

With sleep so recently upon me, where I walk and how I feel is unguided but seems intentional.  It's as if I can juxtapose awareness on a dream or see things from the inside out, feel them and know them in an altered way that gives me access to their substance, as if I am living sensually in absolute terms.  Nothing but my senses - no recall of nagging requirements or limitations - propels me.  I am free to wander aimlessly, compelled to move by feelings of curiosity alone, and it seems akin to sanctuary.  I play here, in this way, free of talk and interpretive words.

I want to learn anew what I have always looked at and perhaps not seen.  The day wants, I imagine, its many parts to be peeled away and reassembled.  The sky is clear, the sun is naked, and there are intense shadows.  Backlit petals are tiny flames.  Colors have odors, textures have sound, and sounds have flavors.  They blend and blur into an illogical melange.  A flower blushes, a leaf seduces, a tree groans and its roots coil deeper into the darkness of deep earth.

Simplicity of intention allows me to enter and live in that loosely held, time-unbound existence of creative mind/automatic body.  There, I imagine; I create; I think and love and feel and live.  I am alive.  I am more myself in this state of unawareness and altered mind than any other.  I feel renewed, transformed in some undefinable way.  This is what I seek at dawn.  

This in-between condition feels as essential to me as breathing water is for a fish.  Deliberate introversion in the quiet stillness of sensual existence is my air; it is my creative medium.  I cannot be alive without it.

Not a Bad Dream

My car's headlight was out - or so I thought - so I took it over to the mechanic's garage and dropped it off for repairs, bracing myself for the bill by walking down to the ocean, two blocks away.

Places around town are referenced by saying you go up to the store or down to the ocean; everything's on a slope.  You can walk around, goat-like on the horizontal from one place to another, but a lot of the terrain around here is up or down.  Well, that's an aside I guess.  But, if you're on a bicycle you're very aware of the up-ness and down-ness of your route - your legs are telling you things about the terrain you never pay attention to in a car.

So, I was down at the ocean and noticed the titanium blue of the water, the healthy swell coming in and then heard a little squalling voice.  Just like I'd heard before last month at the Monastery Beach shoreline, it was a little sea otter pup yelling for its mother.  Mom was close by and scooted right over to the anxious pup, and they put their heads together and jostled in the waves until Junior was calmed again.

The little sea otter was about 18-24 inches long and the mother was fully mature (a gray muzzle clues you in to maturity in sea otters), probably 36-40 inches long.  In order to get a good photo of a sea otter, you need a pretty long lens and a tripod to keep shake to a minimum.  They're active animals, constantly diving to the bottom to look for shellfish.  They bring up rocks, too, and bash the shellfish open on a rock held on their chest.  It's an effective technique for opening up thick shells.  Then they dig in and devour the soft interior meat.  On quiet days you can hear the clacking sound of shell hitting rock and then their loud crunching as they chomp the seafood.

Cormorants, swimming low in the water, were diving for fish using their wings to propel them down to the bottom in the uprising swell of big waves.  Our ocean is not always clear, but lately it has been and when the swell is less vigorous you can see areas on the bottom that are sandy interspersed with rocks and kelp as well as other intertidal plant life.  Sometimes a big swell stands up and seems to pause before it crests and then collapses against the shoreline rocks.  As it stands there, you can see seals or the diving birds swimming in the blue-green water as if they're in an aquarium.

The Recreation Trail is one of the few horizontal and relatively flat routes for joggers, walkers and cyclists to use easily.  Generally my progress is slow because the shoreline that parallels the trail is so incredibly distracting.  Today, I found myself idly squinting out at a stout fishing boat powering toward the Monterey harbor or one of the sea otters or harbor seals working the shore, but then my mind wandered to all sorts of other things, and I lost track of time and everything else as the rumbling surf lulled the morning's ambition right out of me.

My mechanic called me and said the headlight was fine, none of the lights needed to be replaced.  Well, okay then.  Hmmm, I guess I was dreaming.  The shore walk was refreshing; I would have missed it if the headlight had not fooled me.  Or did I dream the whole thing?  I wish I had dreams like this all the time.

iPhone 4G Shots: Trying It

I don't have much time to write and create a written piece as I had planned, so I'll post a few photos taken with my new iPhone 4G.  I'm getting used to it, remembering I have a few options I didn't have before.

A few tips:  Stay away from contrasty images where there is a lot of intense bright and dark shadowy areas.  Keeping the camera focused on an entirely shaded subject gives somewhat more accurate color.

You probably won't be able to focus in any closer than about 18".  I've tried to get closer, but no matter how still I am the lens itself is the limiting factor.

Hold very still when touching the phone's shutter icon on the center bottom of the screen.  Of course, if you want to blur on purpose, it can create a good blurring of color.  Play with it.

Look all around you.  You never know what's going to grab you and seem like a great shot.

I was out at Asilomar State Beach last night as the sun was setting behind some storm clouds.  Earlier, I found a quiet spot at the shore and noticed a little sea anemone shell with some pebbles.  iPhoto helps balance warm and cool shades and refines focus and then I'm ready to post.