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The Hollow End:

A Radiating Whimper
in the Shadow of the
Bang
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
--from 'The Four Quartets', T.S. Eliot

"The Fukushima catastrophe is potentially unlimited in time and spaceThe [meltdowns are] a
catastrophe that opened up a fissure in time and space both in the past and in the present and in the
future. So that what seems to be past is no longer past, but becomes present in a new way. And
similarly what hasnt happened yet is menaced by this momentThe horror of inhabiting radiation is
that it menaces the future in the present. And it makes the future hostile in the present." --Kodwo
Eshun, Director of 'The Radiant' a Fukushima project

At Fukushima Daiichi, the reactor cores have burned through the containment vessels to take
residence within the earth where they will act as perpetual toxicity machines for millennia if
not millions of years to come. No human countermeasures can avert this process. As if an
actualized China Syndrome wasnt enough, typhoons and earthquakes promise to further
exacerbate the situation in the coming years. Proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the airborne
contamination released by the initial explosions add second and third dimensions to a disaster
already with no equal in recorded human history.
Even officious smiles are melting. Recently, theres been a rash of creepy clown sightings
around the world. Normally secretive false-whale dolphins have been rising from deep waters
to batter themselves against Pacific boats, chattering madly. We are being assailed by the
unlikeliest messengers. If Fukushima is the culminating catastrophe it appears to be, then a
unique gathering point in time has been reached where past and present converge with a
shuddering coherence. At least Odysseus had a home to struggle back to. The breadcrumbs
that led us to this dark corner of the Enchanted Forest have been ravaged by crows. Though
we may persist in going through the motions, any meaningful catharsis has been permanently

foreclosed. Even absurdity will be a tough gig to sustain. Who accompanies us? Why, nothing,
what else? Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. So said Ernest Hemingway in A
Clean Well Lighted Place. All pretense of determined and meaningful journey (if it ever really
existed) has been stripped away, both ahead of and behind us. The fullness of time is not a
consummate and joyous arrival after all. Where went the gates of heaven and the bleating,
congratulatory trumpets? We are defined in the end by an ignominious denouement. So this is
T. S. Eliots still-point.
The echo of The Four Quartets is unmistakable in Kodwo Eshuns recent quote (above) as Eliot
once again precedes us by a fair mouthful. This current, pregnant Fukushima moment has
birthed the apotheosis of hubris. Masters, not of the universe but of transcending failure, we
trace irredeemable time in collapsing space. We sought to wield blithely inhuman forces whose
prerogatives exceed and precede us by close to 13.7 billion years. Now the eternal present,
defying our bid for fire, spews death into life. Cosmic punishment is a bitch. We are condemned
to suffer the whimper of a billion tiny extinctions: Cancer. Birth defects. Frankenstein fetuses.
The Bible-thumpers will feel cheated by this Armageddon in increments. Frankly, we dont
deserve the cinema of fire.
For decades, crocodile tears were shed for the sin of mortgaging future generations on the
selfish consumption of the present moment. Apparently we failed to summon adequate
shame. First, the sweat and toil of past generations was squandered. Then the future was
hurried forwardwith a vengeancein an attempt to sustain the Present Madness. This
Molochian impulse (eating the young) spawned a global debt that currently exceeds three
times our present-day, annualized exertions (313% of world GDP). The financial markets are
the aggregated, collective consciousness of mans greed and fear, the most viscerally present
(and consequently least rational) of our emotions. The tape doesnt lie. Mankind saw
Fukushima coming and invested accordingly. This inhuman debt load will not be borne after all
because our children, should they manage even to be born, will not be human. Though a vaguely
human imprimatur may well survive, somewhere between the Teratogen and the Transhuman,
man, as we know him, will cease to be.

http://www.artvilla.com/plt/near-and-far-the-teratogen-sonnet-series-poem-video-normanball/

Back to Eliot whose usefulness returns with dispiriting prescience. Fukushima is the Hollow
Mens prickly pear, the cactus in a room animated by immobilized gesture. Inhabiting deaths
twilight kingdom, we await deaths other kingdom. The Hollow Mens lean is our shadow falling,
unforgivably and improbably, across the future and the past. Quite beyond condemning
ourselves weve condemned the ones yet to come as well as those who have crossed. The
implicating gravity of this sin, if we were to fully reflect up on it, would be too much to bear.
Transcending times polite and discrete demarcations, The Otolith Groups Kodwo Eshun
suggests Fukushima has morphed from mere disaster into the time-collapse of human
catastrophe, on the way to nada. The End Times are here, gathered with us in the still. We trace
our whimpers in the shadow of the bang.
_______________________________________________

Norman Ball (BA Political Science/Economics, Washington & Lee University;


MBA, George Washington University) is a well-travelled Anglo-American
businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch,
Asia Times, RINF, The Western Muslim & elsewhere.

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