Surreal/Visceral

As I watched the images on the screen on 9/11/01, I was reminded of another tragic explosion out of the clear blue that occurred on January 28, 1986. I was in a completely different life, living in the Caribbean working on a sailboat & waitressing. I happened to stop into a little cafe on my way to the beach where the morning news was on TV. Since I didn't have a television, it was a rare treat to actually watch TV. The morning news was on and the Challenger shuttle lifted off and, several seconds later, exploded. I stared at the screen not believing what I just saw...and then looked outside at the beautiful clear blue sky and tried to process the tragedy I just saw in the context of paradise. Surreal & visceral.

Five years later I watched as the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. I had friends in NY who had either worked in those buildings themselves or were connected to the life within those towers in some way. A few years before, I had been to the upper decks to see the world laid out before me and could imagine how seeing a huge plane coming out of the clear blue sky would be impossible to process. Surreal & visceral.

Fast forward to now.

I, and many others across the globe, have spent the last five years actively working to create the spaces in which all kinds of people can reconnect to purpose and reactivate the hope that we're all born with...and that has taken some tough hits of late.

Some of them are virtual like Zaadz and Jeff Skoll's amazing vision The Skoll Foundation; others you can visit in person, like the Building Arts College in South Carolina and The Crucible in Berkeley. The range of these projects is immense, their power to create change in the world is infinite. And you won't see this stuff on TV. All real...still visceral.

I don't have a neat way to end this. I'm just glad it's been begun.

rg