mood: sleepy music: 'come in alone' by my bloody valentine

so yesterday i went to work at 2 and helped out with the new year's sushi rush until about 6:30. afterwards, i went back home to eat dinner. i wasn't in the mood to spend money. anyways, by the time i was done and about to leave again, it had stopped raining very hard. it was coming down like one of those mist things at theme parks on a hot day. so i went to 'the bridge', which is a movie theater and its surrounding complex, complete with overpriced goods. i wanted to browse the bookstore and why not use the giftcard someone gave me for christmas to buy a smoothie. it wasn't very good, but 'oh well'.

i spent probably an hour or two looking around for interesting books or poetry before giving in and going to the starbucks across the way. i ordered, and while they were making my tea i spotted a few issues of the l.a. times lying around. the front page photo was shocking: a pile of bluish-grey bodies with waterproof tarp loosely covering them. it was a makeshift morgue for tsunami survivors to identify those who didn't make nature's cut. what stood out more was in the lower left corner: a dead baby. it looked different from all the other bodies. whereas the other bodies looked dead, the baby looked more like it was asleep than dead.

it was an overwhelming photo. i almost immediately tried to put myself at the perspective of the survivors, searching the pile of bodies as a last resort to finding a loved one. i tried, but i'm sure i wasn't even close to understanding what that's like. i stood there staring at the photo for a short time, but i had already felt a few shudders when they called my name. i think if i stood there longer, i would've started to cry, if only just a tear or two. they're like character foils: this small fragile child, fallen to the rising waters of a monstrous tsunami. i think at that point it hit me just how big this is.

---Goei---