Myself and the small male have been attentively watching the emergence of the miners. The realm of what’s happening and how we are able to partake — distantly — is curious and extraordinary. The unknown and unknowing factor of watching the paramedic head inside the human thermos and guinea pig his way down the hole without flinching .. . and the return journey bringing the first of the 33, well we had become deeply acquainted with that metal hole shaft and never thought anything would emerge from it.  There’s also a strangeness to the public witnessing of it all, in that the families grief and anguish is by virtue of the situation, is so raw and public. I wonder whether the collective witnessing helps or intrudes and how that will effect recovery or adjustment.

I began to think about the people who sent them down there in the first place and whether sending people in this technological age into the centre of the earth is really a sensible or necessary idea. Who was witnessing them being sent into an unsafe mine? Tomorrow many workers will enter other unsafe mines, again, unwitnessed.