Today I bought The Times - I rarely buy newspapers, in fact, I only really do when there's something really significant on the front page. I take them home, well-thumbed and read on the tube, the ink slightly worn off on my fingers, and pack them away safely in a box.
I can pinpoint this habit back to a specific date - 12th of September 2001. I remember the front page clearly: vivid, almost obscenely blue sky; two stark white lines; a smudge of black smoke; balls of bright fire. Moments before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. I was almost 17, had just moved school, was blissfully unaware of my naivety. But this - this was too big a thing. The other day I sat around with some friends, nearly ten years on, and the conversation somehow turned to that day. It's almost a cliche, but everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on that day. It's a milestone now, a Before and After. No one, no matter how young, could fail to see how utterly and completely world-changing that day was.
So I bought a newspaper. And it wasn't just the covers I wanted to keep, the terrifying headlines or the shocking images - I wanted the whole papers. I wanted to look back in years to come and see all the many mundane trivialities we concerned ourselves with on the days that rocked the world off its axis, for just a moment. The way that we were still talking about the latest film reviews or the celebrity gossip when the little path we're blazing as a species is shunted sideways, in the blink of an eye, changing everything.
So there they sit, these paper records: dictators and towers and cities toppled, men rescued from deep under ground, new leaders elected, economies slumped, earth shifting and ash-clouds. A little while ago I was clearing out my old room at home and came across those papers, now all packed and sealed in a box that I left my parents with strict instructions to stash in the attic.
Folded and piled neatly next to old birthday cards, my exam results, diaries, letters from friends - little transient things that never seem to lose their significance over time. There's something fascinating in the complete paradox: the fragility of the paper and ink, and the permanence of the stories they tell.
So today's Times will go into the box, and some day I know I'll look back on it and realise how the events that began last friday off the coast of Japan sent aftershocks rippling into the years to come. My only real wish is that, over the years, I will be able to add to this odd collection with happier headlines.
I feel on the brink of being drowned by this tsunami of terrible images, body-counts and lives utterly devastated - I hope that somehow we can rise as a species, rise all over the world and pull ourselves out of this swamping desolation. I know there's so much we can do, so much we can achieve - incredible things. But they're never as loud or as insistent as the tragedies, and this needs to change. We need to get over our rubber-necking morbid fascination and shout - really fucking loud - about all the wonderful things people do for each other and for the world we live in every day.
And with that, I'll finish with a link that I've found and has made me smile, just a little. Small miracles amid the carnage, from the Brisbane Times. Read to bolster your ever dwindling hope reserves. If anyone is reading this and finds similarly hopeful links please do feel free to post and share here - clutch at enough straws and we might just make it through.
EDIT: Since posting this I keep seeing little bits of...well, maybe not "good news" as such, but tiny little human things that I suspect are happening all over Japan right now - kind acts, a smile here or there, politeness and respect and civility in the face of utter ruin. Everywhere we see the depths that humans can sink when they are afraid, in pain - to but I want to hear the stories of the good things - which (believe it or not) are human nature too. So I'm going to compile them here:
BBC news - an old man sifts through the wreckage of a ruined Japanese city, searching for stranger's keepsakes - he finds a photo of a smiling man holding a baby under a blue sky, blossom on the trees in the background, another of a line of children in uniform, a school trip - he puts them in a plastic bag. "The army will burn all of this. If these children are gone now this will be precious to someone."
BBC news - Katie Hinman of ABC News tweets: "Driving through the wreckage of Sendai, and saw the saddest sight: a bewildered horse standing alone among it all."
Then later:
The tweet by Katie Hinman of ABC News about the lonely horse in Sendai (See 2146) prompted Breda Gahan in Dublin to email in: "Can't believe I read this. Please return horse to Natsuko Komura." The BBC's Damian Grammaticas interviewed Ms Komura on Sunday as she searched for her trusty steed near Sendai's beach. She had been riding it when the tsunami approached on Friday, but had not seen it since.
BBC news - A Twitter campaign has been set up to persuade Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, to go to bed.Mr Edano has been dutifully covering the nuclear crisis at all hours of the day and night, but many TV viewers feel the strain is beginning to tell. The hashtag - "Edano, go to bed" - has been trending on Twitter.
