Still thinking about Japan, here shown in a NASA photo from March 13. I'd intended to stick to the desk encyclopedia for cutup material, but a New York Times piece caught my eye, a William J. Broad piece titled, on the web, "From Far Labs, a Vivid Picture Emerges of Japan Crisis." It's fairly limiting to remix one tightly focused source, but this one offered "detailed portraits of the imperceptible," which seemed to want to live in a freer context. So... (Posting late, by the way, as I might this month, but, so far in this young month, keeping up with the writing.)
Our accident
Thousands of miles away, the observable facts: Mystery, code-named “illuminating,” turned out to be complex, fragments marked with the invisible. The subtleties of simpler information melting. We’re witnessing need and time, honestly blind. The cyclical split of sympathy, the partial or full liquefaction of lack. Spin. That division, lattice of hours and days, hidden workings exposed, points to presence, a cooling water. Signal (vivid, scraps emitted) joins the invisible wisps. A blackout can result in observable data points. Snippets of risk. Detailed portraits of the imperceptible. Atmospheric reassurance, a complicated gas we cannot model. What we cannot grasp or name. We cannot avoid division. We are relying on the volatile secret. We inspect the core, marked, damaged, revealed. The likely outcome: duration. An acronym for release.
Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, via Flickr.
