Another Choice

This ignorance, these protective distances which seemed to keep us safe, to spare us the worst, the calamities that swoop far away over there, but not here - this ignorance is taken from us, it is withdrawing and dissolving before us and round us all. We thought, “oh, no, have mercy, what misery…!” and we also thought, at the same time, “this is not in my block, not in my yard, not in my kitchen, not in my bedroom” and then, here it comes: here he stands, the disarrayed, the wounded, the weirdo, the damned, here he stands with his eyes frozen mad – where are those Arms that can embrace it all, this Smile that can soothe and calm and loosen the cord of rage and hatred, melt the shield of obsession, dissolve the lethal solitude, the Arms that can take us all back home? We know this now, that all violence of Nature can find us anywhere and we can have the terrifying experience of its pitiless enmity wherever we may be: it no longer only concerns those among us who choose to live in unstable areas or extreme climates, we all are now concerned.

No site on earth is safe from its fury.

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