Grande Rue

I've heard intelligent people say they would not be helping the people of Haiti because there are people close to home who need our help. That's true, but the New York Times online has offered a compelling argument that we're talking about two completely different scales of need: a panoramic montage of images representing a quarter-mile stretch of road in downtown Port au Prince. Imagine this in your home town.

I scan these images and, again, things start blending together between the real and speculative. What is this blur or overlap or frisson I am feeling between now-times and end-times? Is it the insidious nature of Margaret Atwood's book, or the insidious nature of the times we are living in?

"There was a lot of trash cluttering the streets--burnt things, broken things. Not only cars and trucks. Glass--a lot of that. Shackie said we had to be careful which buildings we went into: they'd been right near one when it collapsed. We should stay away from the tall ones because the fires could have eaten away at them, and if the glass windows fell on you, goodbye head. It would be safer in a forest than in a city now. Which was the reverse of what people used to think.

"It was the small normal things that bothered me the most. Somebody's old diary, with the words melting off the pages. The hats. The shoes--they were worse than the hats, and it was worse if there were two shoes the same. The kids' toys. The strollers minus the babies.

"The whole place was like a doll's house that had been turned upside down and stepped on. Out of one shop there was a trail of bright T-shirts, like huge cloth footprints, going all along the sidewalk. Someone must have smashed in throuugh the window and robbed the place, though why did they think a bundle of T-shirts was going to do them any good? There was a furniture store spewing chair arms and legs and leather cushions onto the sidewalk, and an eyeglasses place with high-fashion frames, gold and silver--nobody had bothered to take those. A pharmacy--they'd trashed it completely, looking for party drugs...."

--Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood