IN THE WAKE OF DISASTER, HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FEEL?

It’s hard to sit here at Birch Hollow, these days, without fidgeting all over the place, reaching for the remote for the television, or the control knob of the radio, to get the latest news updates on world tragedies unfolding. It is almost impossible to enjoy this wonderful scene, unfolding in my yard, and across the lane, where spring is settling so warmly and brightly upon the landscape.....without thinking about the nuclear disaster in Japan, and the radiation that might soon touch over these boglands, and contaminate our seasonal flowers in the gardens we built last spring. I have never been one to succumb to doom and gloom, and as a die-hard realist, it’s always prevailed upon me to live with truth, and cast off all the fiction that attaches itself to interpretations.

With this manic need to divest myself of embellishment, and void my thought process of the wonders of fairy dust, and magic beans, to cure what ails us, I have most definitely invited the universe to weigh heavily upon my soul. So that despite the naysayers and assorted vested-interest experts, who assure me that radiation won’t intrude upon the nature of the land......I will sit here calmly, but tuned-in, appreciating the realities I expect......and the need to break free of the falsehoods coming from those who wish only to minimize and de-stress what is known of actuality.

I am a happy and contented writer. I am an eternal optimist. I have been all my life. In fact, I come from a long line of optimists. Of this I am pleased at my lot in life. There is however, a time, in even the optimist’s life, when anticipation and worry can’t be quelled or removed by honesty or the purity of actuality. Sometimes fiction does seem to be the best choice for what ails me. I can’t imagine writing much at all, of an upbeat nature, if I was told bluntly, by an informed source, that the hinterland of our beautiful country, had been contaminated by one of the most deadly forms of man-made pollution.

What can one write about then......other than to adjust to the new normal.....and that we might all be consumed with reality with no buffer or privilege of fiction......no matter how badly we long for escape. We will be forced to deal with that inconvenient truth.....from a half a world away.