#IIC Bewildered

 Last week I finished a book which is still haunting me.

Bewilderment, speaks to the times we are living in, the challenges faced by humanity and the anxiety felt by young people, particularly those who are are acutely aware of the current threats to the natural world (the central character, Robin, has a particular way of seeing the world, not unlike Greta Thunberg). The book is an artwork that shines a light on the struggles of the natural world and within the book, another meta-artwork is conjured, a banner created with a great sense of urgency, created to affect change and to offer hope for the future: 

    'the banner was longer than the two of us stretched end-to-end. And it was covered in paints,               markers, and inks of all colours. Down the length of it ran the words: LET'S HEAL WHAT WE  HURT... creatures ringed the letters...Strands of staghorn coral were bleaching white. Birds and mammals fled a burning forest. Ten-inch long honeybees lay on their backs along the bottom of the banner....We flipped the whole scroll over. If the first side was hell, this was the peaceable kingdom. This time the words filled the banner's middle, one row above the other: MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE FROM SUFFERING. Creatures crowded in on either side: feathered and fur-covered, spiny, star-shaped, loped and finned, bulky or sleek and streamlined, bilateral, branching, radial, rhizomatic creatures, known and unknown, creatures in the wildest array of colours and forms...'

The book also starts with a quote from Lucretius which I believe must have influenced Iris Murdoch when she wrote The Sea, The Sea ('...stars behind stars, and stars behind stars behind stars...'); Lucretius says:  'Therefore, for a similar reason, we must admit that the Earth, the sun ,the moon, the ocean and all other things are not unique, but number in numbers beyond numbers.'

Bewilderment has stunned me. I just happened upon it in a bookshop when I had no intention of buying a book. I read it in two days. It does what I am trying to do and I must not think that because the book is, the thing I am creating - with many of the same messages and intentions - need not be; Time After Time will have its own sphere of influence and I will include an image of Bewilderment's book cover because things are not and need not be unique, they are all infinitely connected.




References:

Richard Powers, Bewilderment, 2021

Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea, 1978

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, First  Century BC




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