| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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Do you feel celebratory? BILL: I do. And certainly, I have both. But these things I have been doing in the recent couple of years have brought out real celebration in me that I never knew how to do before, and I don't think I would know how to do it now if it weren't for the tragedies that have happened to me here. Sharon's poem reflects the obsession that draws us to the site of a drowning-to witness the parent-an obsession we are ashamed of, in us for reasons we don't yet fathom. She is our chorus, the poetic voice is at the edge of the ocean with her manchild, her eyes searching for the other mother: "Her girl is gone with the three year drought/ this first storm so late in February/ taken with the wrath of a sea held back too long/ |
by a lull on the south Pacific." . . . There is a reason why the sea will suddenly come in a surge and assails and steals our children, reasons that have to do with planetary processes beginning in places in other parts of the planet-when you think in terms of a planet with parts. But in terms of your own person life, what happened here? BILL: How detailed? As much as-or little . . . BILL: Well, I had lived in Albion at the school house for two years then, and I was commuting back to LA and my family was moving slowly up here. The two older girls were in school, and we wanted the younger to get through ninth grade at the school she was at. So we were all commuting. I had not been needing a commercial |