We have, by virtue of our earthquake last August, an inkling of what the people of Kobe, Japan suffered sixteen years ago. The deep inharmonious rumble – the incomprehensible undulation of the floor – the evacuation – the questions; the weak jokes – and everywhere, the chittering of television news reports. Now add to that chunks of buildings falling out of the sky, clouds of toxic dust, screams of the dying and their sudden silence, and a sense of irreparable loss, and we learn what the Japanese knew then: that an earthquake can make the sturdiest of things – buildings, dams, nuclear power plants – as delicate as spun glass. What can it do to something as fragile as the human psyche? [Read more...]