This Just In

Breaking news, if you let it.

do you mind if i turn on the radio? and she says no of course not, the sound of between-stations static, am or fm? i say am because there’s been an earthquake in turkey and syria and i want to know what’s happening. we catch the tail end of the weather, cloudy tomorrow, in the forties, fingers crossed winter’s back’s been broken, and the earthquake is at the top of the hour. thousands of people crushed the middle of the night under smoking crumbs once houses and apartment buildings in a previously fucked war zone, heaping humanitarian crisis heaped upon heaping humanitarian crisis. the balloon drifting harbinger or embarrassment now a fifteen-football-field debris zone off the coast of myrtle beach. non-custodial parent vanishes with her two children for a year and they resurface; what can they be thinking now about family and their place in the world?

i don’t listen to the news, she says; it’s too sad and we can’t do anything about it. but i feel the need to know in this moment, in this car, dopamine voyeurism schadenfreude distinct possibilities. i may be a monster but am i a terrible person? jury’s out so we stop at a consignment store and there’s quality merchandise, carhartt rain jacket and gap jeans, worn flannel and newer spandex, something (stuff) we can do something about (buy). later we walk the neighborhood with our eyes closed and after that of course dinner. meanwhile in turkey and syria the body count staggers, unfathomable; certainly our working hearts should be broken but for being cosseted at a great distance in a warm place where we will eventually settle on a tv show about a terrible plane crash.