On occasion, we are presented with an insoluble, intolerable dilemma. We are witness to things we truly understand, and our heart cries out that we can do something to make a difference for the better.

Our head knows better, though, and comprehends that any action, no matter how seemingly beneficial or at worst benign, in the end will make things worse.

Through an unknowable, vile combination of nature and nurture, some are burdened with more than their fair share of demons haunting their lives. Most have the great good fortune to be blissfully ignorant of this doom and cannot truly comprehend the existence of one so afflicted, for it is nothing more than an existence, certainly not what those unknowing would call a “life”.

The torments never go away, dimming the vibrance and joy in life into a black pit of despair.

It cannot be escaped through drugs; the pain cannot be washed away by alcohol.

Witnesses, no matter how compassionate, no matter how comprehending, cannot help.

Nothing outside the black pit can illuminate the path of escape, because the darkness comes from within.

The message was terse, she “passed away on August 30.”

Passed away, a euphemism frequently exercised because it is impolite to use the hard word “died”, a delicate diversion of attention away from the harsh fact of life, that it ends. Also, a deflection from acknowledgment of things that society has chosen to cast shame upon, a refusal to even see the choices made in despair, in the loss of all hope, thereby creating dark secrets of the departed life of pain and the new ache of loss now the affliction of those who survive them.

The witness has a burden, too, for in understanding what led to the choice made, yet in also knowing that no action could have prevented it, the true tragedy of the black pit of despair is revealed.

I was once in the black pit of despair; somehow, through both luck and perseverance originating I know not where, I managed to crawl my way out. With the comprehension gained through having once been inside the pit, it is in some ways harder to see the situation from the outside than to experience it from the inside.

I met her four years ago at work. I recognized where she was, understood some of what she was feeling (only a partial resonance because each of us has our own, unique demons), and came to know that nothing I could do would help her life; the change needed to come from within, not from without, not from me.

I watched, and was forced to re-experience vicariously and helplessly the progressive deterioration of relationships with others, the blackness crushing her spirit, the inability to see things other than through the distorting lenses of despair and hopelessness.

After little over a year, she could no longer function and left her job. I never saw her again, and I only heard of her indirectly. What little I had heard was hopeful: counseling and other treatment, a new job.

Out of sight, out of mind, until today, renewed as a distant apparition in a tersely worded email message.

If there is some existence after this life we know, I can only hope that in that existence she finds some small measure of peace that was denied her in life.

However, even if there is nothing but oblivion after our life here, I cannot fault her choice; I confronted the same choice, and I know.

Sometimes, oblivion is preferable.

In the wake of hundreds dead in Iraq because of a panic on a bridge, and hundreds or possibly even thousands more dead and certainly millions of lives unalterably changed in the wake of hurricane Katrina, tragedies on a large scale affecting millions, what is one life ended by choice to escape the back pit of despair?

What is one life, filled with darkness and pain not understood by those closest, what is the legacy other than how we who remain choose to remember and learn from them?

On occasion, we are witness to things we truly understand, and our heart cries out that we can do something to make a difference for the better.

Our head knows better, though, and comprehends that any action, no matter how seemingly beneficial or at worst benign, in the end will make things worse.

We can choose to rage against things we can never hope to change, an action that creates much heat but little good.

Or… we can choose differently.

We can make a choice that provides a legacy of some meaning, not of meaningless darkness.

But in the shadow of a choice made out of hopelessness, what is left?

All that remains is for us to strive to make our minute part of the world a better place in whatever small ways we can.

Otherwise, nothing remains for us but the black pit of despair.

Technorati Tags: general, personal

…in times of devestation and despair, perhaps, just perhaps, there is a merciful God.

Hurricane could have been even worse
Puff of dry air weakened storm just before it hit land, meteorologists say

By Matt Crenson
Associated Press
Updated: 1:38 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2005

Devastating as Katrina was, it would have been far worse but for a puff of dry air that came out of the Midwest, weakening the hurricane just before it reached land and pushing it slightly to the east.

The gust transformed a Category 5 monster into a less-threatening Category 4 storm, and pushed Katrina off its Big Easy-bound trajectory, sparing New Orleans a direct hit — though not horrendous harm.

“It was kind of an amazing sequence of events,” said Peter Black, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of the federal government’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

On Sunday, meteorologists watched in awe as one of the most powerful hurricanes they had ever seen churned northward over the Gulf of Mexico on a direct bearing for New Orleans. Fed by unusually warm waters in the central gulf, Katrina easily pumped itself up to a Category 5 monster, with top winds approaching 175 mph. That afternoon a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft flying through the storm pegged its minimum barometric pressure at 902 millibars, making Katrina the fourth most powerful hurricane ever observed.

But by the time it reached land Monday, Katrina was no stronger than any of a dozen or more hurricanes that have hit the United States in the past century. Hurricane Camille had a substantially lower central pressure when it slammed into Mississippi in 1969. Hurricane Charley blasted the Sunshine State with higher winds when it came ashore near Tampa last year.

So if it wasn’t so powerful, how did Hurricane Katrina inflict so much destruction?

The storm’s sheer size was one factor. As powerful as Hurricane Charley was, that storm’s swath of destruction was only about 10 miles wide. Katrina battered everything from just west of New Orleans to Pensacola, Fla., a span of more than 200 miles. At noon Monday, hurricane force winds extended to 125 miles from Katrina’s center.

“This storm was quite a bit larger, so the extent of the damaging wind field would have covered a much larger geographic area,” said Marc Levitan, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University.

Geography also played a role in the hurricane’s destructiveness. The Gulf of Mexico’s northern fringe is an extremely shallow shelf extending up to 120 miles offshore. That makes the region’s coastline extremely vulnerable to the storm surges that hurricanes create as their winds and low pressure pile up water and push it ashore.

And Katrina was moving fairly slowly, about 12 to 15 mph. That gave the storm surge more time to build up as the hurricane approached the coast and then moved inland.

Those circumstances made Katrina “nearly a worst-case scenario,” said Hurricane Research Division meteorologist Stanley Goldberg. Some witnesses reported storm surges of more than 25 feet along the Mississippi coast, among the highest ever recorded. The waters around New Orleans rose as much as 22 feet.

But the catastrophic sequence of events that appeared highly likely on Sunday afternoon — a Category 5 hurricane washing over the Big Easy’s ramparts and filling it like a bowl — did not come to pass.

Instead, a different scenario unfolded. Several levees failed on Tuesday, unleashing floods that placed the city of 480,000 in peril long after Hurricane Katrina had dissipated.

We can only hope and do our best in what we can do.

Technorati Tags: hurricane Katrina, hurricane Katrina news, New Orleans, news

In order to achieve what I desired for my original weblog here at Random Fate to be, I wanted to separate my political views from my other posts into my other weblog, Radio Saigon and my non-political or most balanced analyses into Random Fate.

What I have read in the past few hours goes beyond all comprehension, beyond all belief, beyond all limits, and cannot be restricted to one venue.

I cannot separate the political from the personal.

Some have said that “cultural relativism is evil”. If what they say is true, NO CULTURE DESERVES TO SURVIVE.

I have been reading weblogs on both the left-wing and the right-wing.

What do I encounter in response to the effects of the hurricane Katrina?

Instead of “here is what you can do to help those stricken in New Orleans, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas” I find “what is (insert enemy point of view here) doing about this?” and “they (the opposition) are wrong because they are not doing (whatever)”.

There it is…

Do your own God-damned math, and tell your fellow travelers to SHUT THE FUCK UP if they can do nothing more than to cry how the “other side” is inadequate in their response to this disaster.

If you cannot do the math, if you cannot see the problem, then let me tell you something:

YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Then shut the Hell up and let the adults take care of things, you pitiful, pitiful, hopeless children.

There is nothing more to say, and if you do not understand, you are not intelligent enough to be a full member of the human race.

Technorati Tags: left wing, left wing weblogs, left-wing, left-wing weblogs, right wing, right wing weblogs, right-wing, right-wing weblogs, weblogs

…as the continued deterioration of the situation in New Orleans dominates the news of the aftermath of Katrina that there are other areas that were hit even harder.

Do not forget them.

Donnie has rounded up some disaster relief information links.