Grief.

As the death toll in the Indian Ocean region continues to rise, my brain can no longer absorb the magnitude of the horror and devastation and suffering. I have given, and then given some more, but my paltry contributions seem meaningless and pathetic. Yet I don't know what else to do.

And now it seems that everywhere is death and sadness, to varying degrees but all of it merging together to overwhelm and paralyze me. More terror attacks in Iraq, more people - American, Iraqi, others - lost to the insanity that is the U.S. occupation. Dear, sarcastic, good-hearted Detective Briscoe, dead. Brilliant, passionate Susan Sontag, dead. And the death toll from the waves begins to threaten the six-figure mark.

I can make no sense of it all. My immediate reaction to the so-called tsunami crisis was to think terrorism. Absurd, of course, yet it seemed inconceivable that so much death and destruction could escape human blame. Perhaps if I believed in a deity, I would find solace, or at least explanation, in attributing it all to divine will. But I cannot imagine believing in a god who would use its will to wreak such terrible, terrible havoc.