Informant38

Arundhati Roy: Under the Nuclear Shadow
What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That's what nuclear bombs do, whether they're used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life.
Why do we tolerate them?
{I am sending these words up into the air, like air, almost invisible words like breath. they are breath, breath in the air, up, sending them up until they can see you, over there, around the corner of the turning planet, still unburnt, still defiant, still who you are. I always thought there was some Rumer Godden in that book, I loved that book and because of that, you. and now all I can think of to do is send these words. sending them. so weak we all are in the face of that so easily imagined horror. but then there is the miracle. that things as weak as bodies still come through the door into being. and remain alive. think of the forces pressing against the simplest biology. and we do go on. we have gone on this far. a miracle all by itself. and because you haven't given up, because there are others like that, like you, and have been all along others like you, I haven't given up, either. not all the way. this miracle, this commonplace miracle. that there is good of any kind still on the earth.}