:: Throbbing ::

The contrast was staggering.
The television was on - one of the regional news channels - and snippets of the tragedy streamed into the living room. Dead bodies. Wrecked buildings. Experts. Victims. Politicians. Cut-and-dried footage of touch-and-go news feed: logic in fact and emotion in motion.
But I wasn't in my living room. I was at a friend's annual Christmas get-together. And even as mothers sob on screen for their dead children, even as the botched, swollen bodies flashed real-time via satellite, my reality was so perfectly happy that I felt the bile of repulsion swirling in my insides.
A's father was craving the turkey. Someone - a cousin? - popped another bottle of fizz; chocolates, dried figs, sushi rolls and Christmas song sheets were being passed around.
"Look, a tsunami expert. 40 years and he's finally got a chance to speak!" A rowdy relative, face red with wine, hollered at the television.
Laughter rippled through the group of family and friends; after all, it was a happy occasion. The Christmas tree glittered in a corner, its symbolic presence as fake as its plastic existence. Lovingly wrapped gifts with cutesy little name tags were heaped under the tree. The house smelled of roast and cinnamon. Conversations and red wine flowed. People toasted to health and happiness.
I wasn't sure why I felt so wrong.
Tragedy with no relevance become news. That's just a fact, to which my automated response is a cliched: c'est lat vie. It wasn't anyone's fault that while we were there eating ham with honey sauce there are thousands dying and lost. It wasn't anyone's fault that while we sat in comfort of friends and family, there are thousands who have lost all they have known and loved.
My compassion - for a lack of a better, more accurate word - was as fake as the angel smiling her beatific smile on top of the plastic tree.
How vile, I repeat, we've let ourselves become.

***

And yes. I cringed inwardly as grace was said, as hymns were sang. The glories of the lord indeed. As he watched over this particular circle of believers, 55,000 people perished in what must seem like a deja-vu: the world ending in water.