Have you noticed how disasters bring out the clichés in droves? Why is that? Is the trite and overused that consoling? Or is it that, even though the brain is short-circuiting, it still wants to grasp what’s going on, so it reaches for whatever tools are at hand, no matter how worn and rusted? Or is the language breaking down along with everything else?
“Preparation,” the Lieutenant had said in Iraq, “is what ensures you will fuck up only eighty percent of what you are trying to do.”