Light On Dark Water

Adele's Fungal Infection Has People Talking About Jock Itch

Which people, we wonder? What percentage of the population were aware of this significant news? Of those, what percentage are talking about it? 

Never mind, I don't really want to know. And FYI I saw the headline on the Brave browser's news feed, which gathers stories from about a million sources. This one was on WebMD.

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Of course the really significant headlines of the week involve the five people who, last Sunday, boarded a 22-foot submersible vessel for a visit to the wreck of the Titanic, 12,500 feet down on the north Atlantic floor, and have not been heard from since. Pessimistically, I figured they died abruptly that day. But as I write this there is a "banging" noise picked up by sonar in the area every thirty minutes, which hardly sounds like a natural phenomenon. If the people are still alive they have less than 24 hours worth of oxygen remaining. Even if they're located nobody seems to have a very definite idea of how they might be rescued. It would depend partly on exactly where they are and what's gone wrong, I guess.

Stuff of nightmares. God help them. 

Addendum: here's a powerful meditation on the subject from Charles Cooke at National Review. It's good, but I find myself thinking how useless  powerful meditations are "for those in peril on the sea"–or under it. (Sorry if that link is subscriber-only.) 

Shakespeare so often cast the ocean as the author of human destiny, and even of conscience, and that reason is that the place is truly terrifying. From time to time, we forget that. And then, all of a sudden, we know.

And sure, there is something weird, a little sick, about the way so many of us are following this story, while we read of a boat full of migrants sinking off the coast of Greece with dozens, at least, of people drowned, think "oh, too bad," then go on about our business. It's the extremity of this situation, the terror and horror of the depth involved, and the suspense, that hold us. It's not all that weird to be gripped by it.