Note: This post originally embedded a video of the tsunami hitting a city in Japan. The video is no longer available.
The thing that is most disturbing to me about these videos of the tsunami hitting cities in Japan is not how overwhelming the damage is, but how inevitable. If there were these videos after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, I missed them.
It was an idealized, humorous conception formed by Saturday morning cartoons, I'm sure, but while I realized a tsunami could be overwhelmingly destructive, I pictured it as the classic "giant wave" that you can perhaps see rushing toward you, and then suddenly everything is engulfed.
These scenes are much more horrifying. The water rises...and then just keeps rising. Keeps covering things that should not be covered. It moves benches and trash cans, then small cars. Then large trucks. Then, surely it couldn't be, but it is -- that building is moving -- very slowly at first, but as the current takes it, it picks up speed. A building.
Where minutes ago was dry land, sidewalks and roads is now covered with rushing, swirling, rising ink black water. I have, of course, seen the Mississippi out of its banks in St. Louis, but to imagine it happening in a matter of minutes -- and potentially just not stopping for 30 to 40 feet is entirely inconceivable.
A dream I occasionally have is a typical one, I think -- falling. Thing is, falling isn't like being shot or drowning or something sudden. You have time to contemplate what is happening, and to ponder the inevitable conclusion. I got the same dreadful, bile-filled feeling watching the tsunami videos as when falling in the dream. This thing, this terrible thing with a foregone conclusion is happening. You can't stop it or even mitigate it a little bit. It just is, and it will be until it is done and there is nothing for you to do but wait until the end.