It’s funny how when people have a bad day or an unpleasant patch in their lives they can look out at the world and wonder how it can continue to function so indifferently.

“How can those stupid kids play ball with such abandon? Don’t they know I’ve chipped my nail!?!?!?!?!?!”

“What are those goddamned birds so cheerful about? How can they sing when my boyfriend thinks I’m fat?!?!?!?!??!?”

Of course, I’m overly sensitive. If a little girl in Kentucky gets a grass stain, I cover the mirrors and stop the clocks. The atrocity of the current war has had me bouncing off the walls in rage for years; if I think about it too much, the Gordian knot of hopeless evil stupidity that got us into that particular mess and keeps us mired in it, I literally cannot function.

So I’m in a strange condition this week, ever distracted by the catastrophe, shocked that the country beyond the edges of the flood can be going on as it normally does, indifferently, as if New Orleans has merely chipped its nail or Biloxi has tragically discovered his boyfriend thinks he’s fat. I’m even more shocked that overly sensitive me is doing much the same thing: working, researching, holding meetings, walking the dog, eating a delicious cherry pie. Yesterday, I discovered that chocolate protein powder in orange juice tastes just as good as vanilla. Tonight, over my organic microwave dinner, I watched a bit of The Wrath of Kahn and marveled over how much of the dialogue I have somehow memorized.

I don’t want to write one of “those posts,” the ones all of conscientious bloggers are writing. Everybody knows the Red Cross’s web address by now, everyone already knows that the world has changed for the worse in ways we can’t begin to imagine, and I have only one New Orleans memory, which I’ve already dragged out and paraded across the Internet for all to marvel. And yet, how can one not mention the eight-hundred-pound gorilla? We are eyewitnesses to a terrible history; it feels as if the world is teetering on the head of a pin and could fall off in any direction.

If there are any people left in a hundred years, they’re going to wade through our purple prose and think we were all insane.

(Speaking of which, there is something afoot with the art students. Over the past few days, they’ve all quit smoking and changed their artistic costumes, and they appear to be planning a spectacular revenge for my previous comments. Just this evening, a very cute one went out of his way to start a conversation with me, and another one waved at me from across the street. There was no one behind me—I checked—but when I waved back, he turned away.)

* Yes, this is a link.