Say you could “slice” time into vertical units, like 24 hours, or 1 week or 1 year. Let’s take 1 unit of 24 hours.
On that day:
Max the Cat gets a PhD in Vermont
A volcano spews lava all over Iceland
Transatlantic air travel is canceled as a result
Mrs. Evangeline Harris bakes the world’s tallest cake or thinks she has
Wyoming disappears, or part of it, anyway. It was called the Teton Pass.
Media covers the cake
On another day:
Japan has an earthquake
Japan has a nuclear meltdown
The world holds its breath
World leaders opine in measured, useless rhetoric
Dubai gets flooded by one year’s worth of rain in less than one day
Little Johnny hits a home run for the first time
Little Janie does the same
Susie gets her first period
A sinkhole 20 feet wide swallows Jeff Bush, as he sleeps in Seffner, Florida, inhaling Jeff and his bedroom, too
What does this mean?
If you’re Susie, you are scared.
If you’re Miyako in Japan, your children are missing.
If you’re Jeff, you’re dead.
If you’re Johnny or Janie or Max the Cat, it’s a great (even purr-fect) day.
Sometimes I fail in commenting adequately on your brilliant, poignant writing. The parallel construction of this piece in delivering unrelated, wildly different occurrences is brutally effective in portraying the seemingly utter randomness of the universe we live in. A very bracing antidote to any complacency!
But who is Max the Cat?