Coastline Pilot/LA Times

7 November 2003

 

Chasing the Muse

Catharine Cooper

 

Driving into town from the south last week, the sky gradually shifted from smoke shrouded to cumulonimbus formations floating over silhouette of Catalina.  As the sun settled into obscurity, I pulled into the Montage parking lot.  Golden rays broke through the clouds, painting the sea’s surface with reds and golds.  Camera in hand, I raced to the cliff’s edge to capture this precious moment.  I emailed the photograph to a group of friends, with a caption, “It’s as if heaven opened her arms and said, ‘enough’.” 

 

Dawn broke the next morning with more clouds, and later the cleansing magic of rain.  Firefighters in all corners of the southland sighed with relief as the weather turned in their favor.  The siege was over.  The toll of lives and property incomprehensible.  The psychic numbness complete.  The charge now, of settling into renewal, placed upon the table.

 

Certainly, October memories influenced my inability to watch televised coverage of the infernos.  Laguna’s ten-year anniversary played out on the pages of this paper and in all of our hearts and minds.  Tragedy is harder to ignore when it occurs up close and personal.

 

My good friend, Josh Mitchell, had returned to Missouri last year to spend time with his father whose health was failing.  Josh is a talented photographer who has recently opened a gallery in Springfield.  On a late summer’s day this year, he had been home in Stockton.  An itching he couldn’t quite name led him to leave the house and head north for a cup of coffee.  While sipping his latte, his residence vanished within the leap and roar of a tornado.  Had Josh not left, the odds are, I would not have spoken to him that afternoon.  Several of his neighbors perished.  He phoned me from the site, describing the vast hole that had once been his home.  With his usual good humor, he told me that everything he owned was probably in Kansas, including two cars.  But that strangely enough, in the middle of floor of the ceiling-less basement, were two of my landscape photographs, a gift from many years ago.

 

Larry is a gifted engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  He works on interplanetary missions, exploring our neighbors in space so that we might better understand ourselves and our relation to the cosmos.  His son was the light of his life and he bragged of him regularly.  He graduated near the top of his class from West Point in May, 2002.  Earlier this year, he married his true love and shared dreams of a growing family.  In September, he was sent to Iraq.  On October 30, the US government informed his parents that their son had been killed.

 

At times it feels as if everything is collapsing.  Fires, tornadoes and war are but three of a panoply of problems.   I feel impotent to instrument change in the course of the world.  Tears bury themselves deeply, unable to surface.   I can’t find the space to cry. 

 

Somewhere, right now, someone is taking another’s life.  Somewhere, a baby is taking her first breath.  Someone is going to work. Someone is having a traffic accident. Someone is eating breakfast. Someone is singing a song. Someone is holding a hand. Someone is having surgery. Someone is stealing money. Someone is painting what will become a famous piece of art. 

 

Someone is sick.  Someone is getting well.  Someone is writing a Pulitzer prize-winning work.  Someone is writing the script for the next academy award.  Someone is discovering a compound that will extend our lives.  Someone is inventing something I can’t yet conceive.  Someone is pruning a tree.  Someone is planting a flower.  Someone is harvesting a crop.  Someone is counseling a tired friend.  Someone is laughing.  Someone is crying. 

 

The world goes on, even when I can’t make sense of it.  We are small pieces of a larger puzzle, armed with the tools of love and the charge of increasing our understanding.  I have the power to change myself, to continually stretch my skills and comprehension.   I know this one thing:  that with every step, it is my responsibility to make life more fruitful and effective.  For me, that means making this day better than the one before, to overfill it with harmony and joy. 

 

Catharine Cooper loves wild places.  She can be reached at ccooper@cooperdesign.net or 949 497 5081.