when the queen dies

I've been trying to think of something useful to say about the earthquake since it happened; but what would that be, exactly? Not ever stranger has something profound to say about a grief at once so immediate and so distant.

I don't really want to say 'there's nothing to say,' either, because there are many things to say. I'd rather read someone else saying it, someone with more knowledge and insight than me, than watch myself fumbling for some kind of analysis.

I passed the provincial legislature yesterday (the 'ledge' as we called it, when we trampled its lawn for the Trees or the People.) The flag was at half-mast. It must be for the victims of the disaster. (Does anyone know for sure?)

I know there are rules about how long the flag flies, and for whom. There is a hierarchy of public grief. First I think is royalty, and then probably the royalty of fame. I'm almost sure that it lowers for Canadians more specifically, and longer, than for the dead of any other nation.

It occurred to me then that if we flew the flag at half-mast one day for each of the people they think have died in the earthquake and tsunami, we would have to leave it there for almost 300 years.

The legislature itself hasn't been standing that long. Who's to say that it will still be there in 300 years? That particular flagpole almost certainly won't be standing. If we gave just one day to each person who died -- and that seems like little enough -- all of us alive now would have been dead for generations when they raised the flag to full height again.

Then I wondered what it would be like if we put up new flags for each terrible thing that happened, human or natural. Then there'd be a forest of flagpoles on the legislature lawns, flags rising and falling. I wondered if it would make me any better able to assimilate the human cost of something like this. But I suppose I'd just get used to it, not even notice. Take these quiet public records of suffering for granted.

Anyway, that's what I thought, when I saw the flag at half-mast. That's the same flag they'll lower when the Queen dies of old age in her brocaded bed. Not to begrudge the Queen in particular; but what an odd thing to equate, one with the other.

* * *

Slow suspended December has finally dropped away -- hanging water on a branch releases its transparent grip at last -- and I think January's going to go too fast, as though time is starting up again -- as though I'm just now hearing the first clatter of the rain that's going to pour down the whole grey street of my life. The rain being my days, tumbling after each other into the gutter.

Or something like that. The gutter being memory I suppose, and the ocean, somewhere, being Art, huge, terrifying, polluted, and glorious.

{rf}