Flames can be beautiful, but they can transform beauty into hideous ash, as well. Governments can replace chaos with structure, but they also can convert structure into compartments; compartments into cubicles; cubicles into cells; and cells into cages. Nature can replace caterpillars with butterflies…if we let it happen. That’s transfiguration. Metamorphosis, too.
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The death of school children in the recently-launched aggression against Iran echoes some of the circumstances and the emotional chaos portrayed in the Netflix television series Homeland, which we recently began watching (I watched it, or at least some of it, before, when it was originally released, in 2011 through 2020). It’s not just the killing of the school children that seems eerily omniscient or predictive; the paranoia that feeds much of the series’ energy is like the paranoia that is so evident in U.S. society today. I strongly suspect that today’s reality, if presented without any “spin” in either direction, would reveal the fundamental decency of people on both sides of the philosophical and physical battles between the warring cultures. Similarly, that “spin-free” presentation would unveil the core cruelties and the reliance on lies that unnecessarily fuel the conflicts. Neither “we” nor “they” are free of blame or guilt, but neither can legitimately be said to be solely to blame, either. But religion of every stripe is too deeply involved, across the board, to be absolved of responsibility. Religion and bigotry, I think, plant the seeds, nurture their growth, and then pour gasoline over the crops…both their own and their neighbors’.
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Last night, I learned a friend—who recently underwent a hysterectomy for removal of a large abdominal mass—was told her excised tumor is malignant. She is scheduled soon to begin a 3 to 6 round series of treatments with chemotherapy, aimed at eliminating or at least controlling her clear cell carcinoma, which is a a rare and often aggressive type of cancer. Everywhere I turn lately, it seems, someone in my social or familial circle is suddenly forced to deal with some form or expression of cancer. The person with the diagnosis is not the only one to suffer through the experience, of course. Family members, friends, caregivers, and countless others, too, find themselves in a difficult and demanding confrontation with a cruel and complex enemy that floods their lives with challenges no one can be adequately prepared to face. Cancer is not the only such beast, of course. Any serious physical or mental illness or injury has the same capacity to upend lives and wreak havoc on undeserving victims…both participants and bystanders.
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I heard from another friend last night, who offered a book recommendation: Breaking Clean, a series of autobiographical essays by Judy Blunt, a writer with roots in Montana. Though I have not yet read Blunt’s work, the little I have read about her this morning brings to mind another writer with some background in the same part of the country, Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News and several other fiction works I like very much. Proulx, born in Connecticut, also wrote Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Accordion Crimes, Postcards, and several other novels and collections of short stories I appreciate. The two writers are very different in some ways, but they make me think they could be the same person—just configured in slightly (or completely) different ways to fit their unique contexts. The recommendation of Blunt’s book was made, my friend said, because she thought “…you would appreciate it as much as I do. Not for the plot (it’s non-fiction) or the story. But for the writing.” I find such a recommendation especially compelling.
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