the blood black rage against the sky

You probably know more about the Christchurch earthquake than i do. i am without power and have only intermittant water, and so have only my experience, and what people tell me, to go on. i have internet access at work only. So this post will be as scattershot as my own experience.

My small elderly dog keeps trying to get in the car. He wants me to take him away. My 18 year old daughter has now seen four dead people and a building collapse in front of her. Two friends visited on bikes; one of them had his mother die on the day of the quake so they were touring the damage as a kind of therapy. The suburb of Sumner is half evacuated; the main roads out of town are gridlocked. i spent the morning down in the police cells. It was gritty with silt and part of it had been evacuated. They had set up a mess tent and the place was swarming with uniforms - army, police from different places, security guards. We were visited by the Australian Federal Police yesterday. In the evenings when it gets dark my husband and i lie in bed by lamplight and listen to the battery radio, like it is the 1930's.

i knew one of the people who died, slightly. He was a 22 year old young man, a very talented actor, a truly gilded youth. Mostly i have not thought about the deaths, but last night i did not sleep and i was drawn to imagine dying under a desk in an office. And i hoped he died quickly, and then i thought no, that is what i would hope of a feral dog, i cannot think anything useful when i think of him dying. There are no words and no thoughts, just blood black rage against the sky.

When i worked in a particularly harrowing job i would head home and find a voice within myself keening, the way i see in other cultures. When my father died i would take breaks from the family circus and walk around the streets singing. Last night i got up as i have done feeling for the firs titme in years there was no source of comfort. This is a playlist for standing in the dark in the back yard, with the power off, on the cracked and stressed earth:

You gotta Move, by the awesome Mississippi Fred McDowell
Don't Explain, by Billie Holiday
Lake of fire by Nirvana
Working on the Building by Cowboy Junkies
After the Gold Rush by Neil Young
Those totally weirded out gospel numbers from Brother Where Art Thou.
And this, set to music:

I believe
I believe I can hear
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
You gotta seek no other helper

'Be thou content with Me
and seek no other helper.
For none but Me can ever suffice thee'