Under the Rainbow

“There is nothing good in the world that does not have some filth in its origin.” Anton Chekov

It’s raining here on the Platinum Coast of California, a welcome occurrence in the midst of a horrendous drought. The trees and ground open wide. The gutters run. My old Honda Civic will be washed clean.

I haven’t written anything for several days. I wonder what is happening in Fukushima, Japan. How much contamination is flowing into the Pacific Ocean? Why doesn’t the media talk about Fukushima? What is going on with the cleanup effort and what has become of all the people who had to be relocated? I think about the photographs I saw of black bags filled with radioactive debris and soil. Where are those bags now?

In the US our attention is focused on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Iowa caucuses, the halftime show at the Super Bowl, and whatever trivia the corporate media deems essential for us to know. Opinion matters but facts don’t count for much. Don’t like the hard cold facts? Simply ignore them.

Like all those black bags in Fukushima. Can we simply jam our heads in the sand and refuse to see or care? Sure, we do it all the time. We collectively forget, until the next time, and then we act surprised, like such a terrible thing has never happened before. The human species enjoys playing with fire, rolling the dice, betting heavy against long odds.

Rain falls, I think of my responsibilities and obligations, debts, errors, miscues, fuck-ups, folly and for some reason unknown to me I think of Henry Miller and Anton Chekov; I see Miller standing at the edge of a cliff in Big Sur, looking out on the Pacific with his hands on his hips. Chekov is sitting at his desk in a smoky, dimly lit room, a pen in his hand and a faraway look in his eyes. The artist shies neither from the beauty or the horror of the world. Miller turns from the cliff edge, Chekov puts pen to paper. Which is the stronger urge, to create or to destroy?

Navigate broken sidewalks, crumbling stairs, rickety scaffolding, peer through broken windows, step over a child’s shoe and a deck of cards, a syringe and a pile of cigarette butts. Rats scratch inside the walls, gnaw on wire and drywall. The rat, the cockroach and the crow are true survivors; when we are long gone, they will still be here, sorting through our detritus, running through our monuments, and taking up permanent residence in our holy places.

The wind gusts, yanking the eucalyptus trees in the yard this way and that, the wind chimes talk fast, and the sun ducks behind the clouds. There is a rainbow around here somewhere.