post-crisis

Many guesses were confirmed in the assignment in Port-au-Prince. Crisis proximity requiring a faster and more detailed response cycle, data quality being a goal but somewhat of a red herring, variability being both the best friend and worst enemy of "good" reporting, the inter-wovenness of reporting, information supply chain and governance. Each one of these topics is a life of work.

But something falls short, somehow; there's a missing bit I haven't quite crossed yet, I'm still a polywog somehow with the equator just over the horizon. The vortex at the heart of governance and fora and negotiated truth/speech. The center produces the stream, and I'm just watching the stream, trying to make it go faster, better, cleaner. Because maybe I'm afraid to go closer to where words change meaning as soon as they are shared, where words catalyze little state changes all over the place all the time.

That sounds too complex though. I have to keep turning the Gordian knot over and over and over. Meanwhile the kids are catching up and I am losing my desire to go fast. Quite the opposite, I increasingly desire to hold absolutely still. Slow myself.

Someone asked me once in some late night grad school pub test what superhero I would be. I said I would stop time, while being able to move about. To rearrange the pieces, to set the variables differently, the alter the outcome. I wouldn't care if anyone knew. To save a life.

Nothing has been so important to me in a long time; I have been swimming as hard as I can, eyes on the horizon, but I think now maybe all this frantic busyness hasn't been the key.