I feel I should write something, but I don't know what to say. I'm in agreement with everyone's despair, and anger over the national government's response to the disaster (or lack thereof), but adding my voice to the chorus won't accomplish much. I got paid today, so I'm finally able to donate some money, but it seems such a pitifully small thing to do. Still, if enough of us do it, it will help.

I had to write an obituary today about Giles Hart, chairman of the HG Wells Society who got blown up in the bus bombing in London this July. He was a tireless advocate for human rights, especially outspoken in the 1980s when Poland was under totalitarian rule. Here's a guy who opposed oppression and occupation, who got exploded by people ostensibly protesting occupation and oppression. These terrorists are so stupid. Bombs are such blunt instruments. What a waste.

And what can I do? I write. Never has this seemed a more useless, selfish, pointless occupation, but it's all I know how to do. I learned how to be a better person from books. I learned how to think for myself and how to value people and how to understand complex situations from books. Maybe my books will help somebody in the same way someday. At the very least, writing makes the hours go by.

What else do I do? Drink margaritas to take the edge off. Eat too much, because that's what I do when I get anxious. Have anxiety dreams about my wedding (where there's nobody to perform the ceremony, where I forget to write the vows, where no guests show up), then wake up feeling ashamed for having anxiety dreams about such trivial things when such unimaginable suffering is happening down south. But then, there's always unimaginable suffering happening somewhere in the world, and most of the time I don't even think about it; the hurricane just hits close enough to home to penetrate my appalling force-field of self-interest.

So I'll send money. And I'll keep living my life, and trying to make the best of every day I have, with the awareness that nothing is promised, nothing is unassailable, and I could lose everything at any moment, as so many others have. I'll remember to be a little kinder to people. I'll be thankful that the blind clashing mechanisms of diasaster haven't swept me up in their perimeter.

I'll worry, and have bad dreams.