how they make people feel
Lifted from an online news article about the California wildfires, this short paragraph caps the human sense of probably any scene of disaster.
"One of our correspondents, a former Baghdad bureau chief, writes that the scorched landscapes are reminiscent of war zones — not just in how they look, but in how they make people feel."
It reminded me again of a recent photograph that showed a man walking dazed and stunned in the rubble that had been a street, of his war torn and desolate, devastated hometown and his new life in a dystopian nightmare totally beyond his ability to be in charge of even himself. It is apocalyptic if you are there; and if you are not there, or never have done, it is impossible for you to understand, or for the one who is there to reduce to words about feelings.
Here at the far west end of Bay County the world looks safe and normal and my mind settles down, the sea is calm and we can buy tomatoes and a bottle of wine at Carousel. Yet even now, more than a month on, driving Across the Bridge into Panama City and through the Ruins of What Was brings instantly back the raging fury of grief I cannot describe and do not understand within myself; and the deeper into the epicenter, the more intense the rage.
At Who or What?
Know, I do not know, cannot identify, focus or center on the object of such bitterness, hatred. Who, What, Why has done this to us? Reason, to know that we are simply in nature's way, does not mitigate the feeling, as the paragraph above has it, "how they make people feel."
At 83 it's risky, but my personal goal is to be twelve months and twenty-four on, years downstream, look back and say, We made it.
Who is our greater enemy,
Father Nature, or we ourselves. We are close kin.
Remember that you are dust ...
"One of our correspondents, a former Baghdad bureau chief, writes that the scorched landscapes are reminiscent of war zones — not just in how they look, but in how they make people feel."
It reminded me again of a recent photograph that showed a man walking dazed and stunned in the rubble that had been a street, of his war torn and desolate, devastated hometown and his new life in a dystopian nightmare totally beyond his ability to be in charge of even himself. It is apocalyptic if you are there; and if you are not there, or never have done, it is impossible for you to understand, or for the one who is there to reduce to words about feelings.
Here at the far west end of Bay County the world looks safe and normal and my mind settles down, the sea is calm and we can buy tomatoes and a bottle of wine at Carousel. Yet even now, more than a month on, driving Across the Bridge into Panama City and through the Ruins of What Was brings instantly back the raging fury of grief I cannot describe and do not understand within myself; and the deeper into the epicenter, the more intense the rage.
At Who or What?
Know, I do not know, cannot identify, focus or center on the object of such bitterness, hatred. Who, What, Why has done this to us? Reason, to know that we are simply in nature's way, does not mitigate the feeling, as the paragraph above has it, "how they make people feel."
At 83 it's risky, but my personal goal is to be twelve months and twenty-four on, years downstream, look back and say, We made it.
Who is our greater enemy,
Father Nature, or we ourselves. We are close kin.
Remember that you are dust ...