Creating out of Chaos

I wanted to share a beautiful essay I just read about the urge to create, called "Finding the Courage to Begin Again" by Amy L. Wink. I have been thinking a lot myself since the storm about my desire to write. Something clicked for me about four weeks after the storm when I read a review of E. L. Doctorow's new novel The March about General Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War. This work recognized what so many other war novels did not, the reviewer contended, namely "the way that destruction transfigures, pulverizing established human communities and forcing the victims to recombine in new ones. . . . Yes, war is hell, and 'The March' affirms that truth, but . . . hell is not the end of the world. Indeed, it's by learning to live in hell, and through it, that people renew the world. They have no [other] choice." These words came as a revelation to me. I had not yet begun to imagine the future. Yes, our lives would change. We would move on from this low point--if not to bigger and better things, at least to a normal life again. And an important part of that renewal for me is the urge to create out of the chaos. And I guess that's why I'm here now, blogging away, because I need to give shape to all of this. Amy Wink quotes Katherine Anne Porter: “Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, . . . but the work of the artist ... is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.” That's all we can do.