Monday, January 18, 2010
recourse
Enough of that depressive position this morning:
1/18 — 8:53 am
I say I’m a “news junkie,” but that trivializes my desire to understand details of how we, humanity, are evolving—to understand particulars (often tedious) in “how it goes.”
So, I risk depression in the face of catastrophe’s narrative.
(Thank goodness, I’m not living the quake[—Jan. 2018: in Haiti.])
The weekend before last (Sunday, 1/9), I happily intended to write something by yesterday that might be creative and satisfying. But I didn’t.
1/18 — 3:32 pm
Even as the earthquake was overwhelming me, I was still wanting to climb a tree (end of “what goes...,” below).
Mood goes to and fro on a sea. It was late Thursday—Friday really—that the scale of the tragedy came home. My cynicism about American care would be nothing compared to Haitian despair. The least we can do is suffer empathy (and contribute something, at least symbolically). But did you know that there were 45,000 Americans in Haiti when the earthquake happened, most of whom were there working for humanitarian agencies? It makes one proud to be an American. Hail Bill Clinton, U.N. Special Envoy for Haitian development in recent years.
But perhaps I’m right: “Often, the best we can do is to go on with our own lives the best we can.”
And don’t try to be The Moralist of others’ lives (which, I guess, is the kind of thing a moralist might say).
Happy intending of creative satisfaction. What more could one want from life? (Okay, a lot, but hey, creative satisfaction matters).
So, hmmm (feigned pensive moment...), where was he before the tragedy?
Celebrating anticipations of “creative play”—which is no substitute for actually doing it!
Creative process as subject of creative process—the self-begetting writer (so postmodern)—gets tiring!
Chameleon days of scenic life (without willful dishonesty) can be a pretty thing (i.e., fun) and so appreciative, you know.
This living instance of the horizoning Child in our humanity, facing a starry night, maybe does have no ultimate recourse but poetic hope (something else a moralist might say).
Anyway, just you wait.
