Green: WorldChanging.com brings a new word:
The Renaissance Italians had a term, ‘terriblisma,’ by which they meant the strange, gratified awe one feels when beholding dreadful disasters and acts of God from afar. The term may be six hundred years old, but the sentiment could not be more contemporary. In fact, terriblisma is a quite native 21st Century aesthetic.
So there it is — I’m a terriblismophile. (That’s probably not a valid word, combining Italian and Greek, but hey…) Judging by this entry, marathon-running blogger Maciej Ceglowski may just be one too.
One of the things on my to-do list has been to see a live volcano; still haven’t managed it yet. Then, possibly, a tornado. I’ve also been meaning to type in and post a couple of snippets from Mike Davis’ Ecology of Fear (and judging from that book, a tornado in SoCal may not be out of the question). Also, the surreality of the wild fires was pretty enjoyable from my comfy well-out-of-danger’s-way vantage point. No question — I’m a terriblismophile.
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