Wednesday 16 March 2011

What we can


Even if it’s a drop in the ocean (a wince-inducing image after the tsunami), to do what we can is the only alternative to succumbing to despair and indifference in the knowledge of disaster on a huge scale.

BluePrintReview editor Dorothee Lang brought together some blog-posts she read yesterday and the day before about Japan. I also felt much in tune with everything my friend Marja-Leena Rathje wrote. Feeling like minds echo with like thoughts seems meaningful.

The creative impulse reminds us we are still alive, in spite of everything. It’s very force and beauty can sustain – that’s what I felt reading this poem by Roselle Angwin. It can also be one of many ways to offer a small, tangible help: some of these bloggers linked to one initiative or another by artists to raise money for the survivors of recent disasters in Japan and elsewhere.

These are some thoughts to hold, in the face of disaster we can do nothing, nothing at all, to prevent. And then there is disaster that could have been prevented: the other thought much in my mind today concerns a return to the activism of my youth against nuclear power.

2 comments:

marja-leena said...

Thank you so much for your words, Jean, including at my blog and in linking to it. This human connection in sharing our sorrow is so important, isn't it? I've been thinking of offering my works as a fund-raiser for Japan but still haven't set up some kind of sale site to facilitate it easily (one of those to-do things I keep meaning to get to). Now I'm going to explore the other links...

Anonymous said...

Oh yes, Jean, and I'm going to follow those links. Thank you for them and the inspiring thoughts.