Marlys
Being a cockeyed pessimist, I’ve always dreaded September, the beginning of the end of summer. The weather was anything but benign this summer up against the Rockies, nor were the spring and winter before it. Much of the country and world fared worse. Are things really going downhill that fast or am I just getting old? (That was rhetorical–don’t answer.)
When my kids were babies I’d lay awake nights worrying that the world, the weather, you name it, was heading for a chaos that would deprive them of a future. War, famine, disease, earthquakes, nukes–oh my. They’ve had their share of fortune and misfortune, but I’m proud of how they’ve handled both–well I’d worry less if they saved more–but . . . .
So, what’s this got to do with writing and writers? Well, like almost everyone we are deeply scarred by the real world and the people in it and shaped for that matter no matter how hard we’d like to deny it. We are not just ourselves and our characters and imaginations but our families, friends, neighbors. And most of us aren’t smugly comfortable with all this like the smugly rich. Which confuses me–the more monstrous the mansion the easier to drop missals on it. Surround it by a forest? Start a forest fire. Is it just the gullible who agonize over ominous prognostications? (I’ve always wanted to use that word.)
It’s been the beginning of the end all my life, way back to when my father was about to be drafted during WW 11. My parents are both gone now, lived to ripe old ages, and he never did go to war. It ended just in time, like a good story does after promising dire destruction. So I’ve decided the world will last long enough for me to polish up the book manuscript I’ve been working on, go to Switzerland, finish the short story I lost in computer hell and learn the quirks of my Dell Inspiron and survive the foibles of imminent weather change and the crash of the housing market. Maybe now all those lenders will quit insisting I sell my house or even worse, borrow money against it. The end of the world is right around the corner and has been my whole life. Yours too, you know. So enjoy while ye may. Actually, the end of the world started with Noah. Right? Or the snake in the Garden of Eden, or meteor showers or the Great Bang, comets colliding. We won’t even go into vengeful Mideast terrorists, religious fanaticism in every religion on the planet, probably even Buhdism by now. Bottled water, plague, genocide, greed/poverty, nukes/ignorance in high places. Just don’t blame the lions and tigers and bears, oh my. They’re in real trouble. Enjoy now. It’s the only one you got.
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