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Where were you when you
heard about the tsunami? I was sitting at the kitchen table, recovering
from a family Christmas when the news overflowed from the TV.
Gradually the trickle of information grew to a flood and day after
day my familiar shores were pounded by relentless waves of statistics
and science. As the toll grew information ebbed and flowed across my landscape,
explaining, quantifying, worrying, justifying – undermining my comfortable
existence.
Now the deluge of data has subsided and the monster wave has been deposited
in our shared memory. But a sediment of images remains, layering questions
about our relationship to physical and emotional environments, confusing
our concept of identity.
Images of homes encrusted in debris, rows of photographs pinned to
walls, pavements strewn with personal belongings, thousands of names rippling
across a computer screen, a bright pink shoe in a sea of mud. Vestiges
of identity left stranded by the swollen tide.
Can we still deny the fragile, temporal nature of our existence? Can
we now acknowledge the strength of the emotional bonds we share?
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