I’m finding it difficult to remove myself from daily events and isolate myself into writing. It’s been hard enough trying to define the story of the next book although I have the characters, the location and the time, it’s just not coalescing. And so I’m much more vulnerable to the effects of everyday horror. Daily there’s a mass shooting, the Republicans constantly roil the waters with repugnant challenges, climate change deniers continue to prevent our taking appropriate measures and the country rises up against a soldier and his family before we definitely know the facts. My mood swings from anger to sadness to complete dismay at the state of our country’s reaction to anything, anymore, anytime. And I don’t even watch Fox News.
I’d like to take refuge in a world of my own making, where I get to control the issues, the conflicts, the desires of my characters, but I can’t. I want to say something profound about the state of our world. I watch episodes of “Cosmos,” and I wonder how our universe has survived and will it continue with the human species alive and well. I’ve always lamented that left to me we would still be in the cave because I wouldn’t get the significance of watching a rock roll down the hill and turn it into the wheel or what do do with that hot stuff that started burning after a storm and could there be use for it, like cooking. Or rotten fruit, what to do with that? Somebody says drinking it will make you loopy. Patterns of stars up above would just be pretty to me, not informative as to how to move around the planet or what the seasons will be. Recognizing patterns in the midst of chaos is not my forte.
And how could TV bring back marathons of Law & Order, just when I thought I was weened away? It’s like comfort food, I know it will all be solved or at least resolved in an hour and I won’t have to worry about real life encroaching upon me until I switch it off.