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Paris, January 4, 2005 | Annual horoscope details below this post

It's difficult to believe that we're watching the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in modern history. This, in a time when we've seen many such disasters and quite a few unnatural ones as well -- and though the pain of the tsunami is enormous, it's truly a relief to see military forces helping people instead of killing them. I just heard on BBC that the United States is running its "biggest operation in Asia since the Vietnam war."

It's difficult to believe that an overwhelming natural disaster can happen any time, anywhere. Europe's coast in the 18th century was overwhelmed by tsunamis; a few millenia earlier, an earthquake followed by volcanic eruption in Santorini, Greece wiped out much of the Mediterranean region, effectively ending Minoan civilization.

The web of life is no less fragile today; we just think it's not. We don't think that everything that happens in this world happens because everything is working right. Which is often a stretch.

In America, most food is shipped 2,000 miles from where it's produced before it gets to the kitchen table, which means that eating is highly dependent on the transportation network functioning properly. It does not take much to shake things up, and in reality, our emergency responses systems are largely untested. We have no experience dealing with a truly wide-scale problem in the states. Most people are unprepared for actual emergencies and have no experience doing so.

We do have experience with relatively small, occasional disasters, though. Some have been more impressive than others -- the fires in California and this year's hurricanes in Florida come to mind. So does Sept. 11. I lived through a flood that struck central and northern New Jersey in 1999, which was an extremely strange and life-altering experience. It came as a result of Hurricane Floyd, which by the time it arrived in the New York area was nothing more than a whole lot of rain.

But the rain, combined with overdevelopment, resulted in flash flooding in a heavily populated region of the northeastern United States, half an hour's drive from Manhattan. The storm followed a summer of drought during which I dreamed repeatedly of rising waters. Then came the Aug. 11, 1999 total solar eclipse in Leo.

The storm rolled up the coast and let loose millions of tons of water. People who did not even know they had tiny streams running through woods at the edge of their back yards suddenly found their houses under water.

I happened to be sharing a house that was built on a tiny island on the Saddle River. A dam upstream in Rockland County burst as a result of the heavy rains, and a surge came downstream. As the flood waters rose, firemen came gave us 15 minutes to get out, and we were evacuated across the front lawn on a lifeline. Our house was soon flooded with 30 inches of mud. We would have survived; our plan was to go to up the attic and wait.

Returning early the next morning offered a glimpse of the devastating power of water. Everything reeked; I can practically still smell it. It was if the entire contents of the house had been dumped and shaken in thick, dark mud. The kitchen trash pail was in the fireplace. Furniture had floated and had landed on my friend Neal's bed. Everything located under 30 inches was contaminated or destroyed by toxic river mud which had not been stirred up for a generation. Most of it was thrown out. Hundreds of homes in the region were affected.

The next day's New York Times had a picture of downtown South Bound Brook, N.J., with a volunteer fireman in full gear riding a jet-ski in front of a flaming building. It was utterly apocalyptic. Neal, with the help of friends, his father and insurance, gradually rebuilt his life. I threw out what was destroyed, packed up or stored what was left, and went down to Florida -- dropping right into the middle of hurricane season. But he chose to stay in that house. I asked him how many more floods like that it would take to get him out, and he said two.