The apocalypse is upon us.

Actually, I thought it was upon us back on 9/11. I didn’t think about it so much around the tsunami in Asia. But nothing hits home like a city on U.S. soil being wiped out. I was driving through New Orleans just a few weeks ago, staying in a motel in Mississippi a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

Now … Wow. No words for this.

This kind of thing is one of my worst nightmares. To have all sense of life and self be swept away by an impossibly powerful force … To me, it’s more frightening than any other natural disaster, or any human-made disaster too.

Maybe it’s why I’ve developed such a strong counterphobia to catastrophe. Because deep down, I really do expect that at some point in my life, all will be swept away and I will be left with nothing but my own wits and skills.

I am amazed at the strength of all who are suffering. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose everything material, all sense of place and security in the world, to have only one’s life and the shirt on one’s back.

No doubt soon we will collectively start covering up the direct experience of this event with stories and spin. It has already started. But for now, this direct, immediate contact with death and life and the very real forces of nature — it’s sobering and enlivening.