I have a problem.
It’s an easy-going Sunday morning in Launceston. I stroll to the shop and buy the weekend paper. I sip my tea and read the weather and comics. Browsing through the news I suddenly pause – on page 11 is an article entitled “50,000 warheads in a system out of control”.
The first paragraph says: “More than 50,000 warheads are stored in at least 16 nations and on warships around the world in a nuclear deterrent system growing too complicated to control, two nuclear experts warned yesterday.”
How … depressing? I don’t know if that is the right word. It’s more like overpowering, like the feeling of losing your brakes going down a hill, like a dark cloud. It shadows me. It creates a dilemma: how does one continue a normal life, knowing that there are 50,000 warheads aimed at the world’s major population centres? It’s a dilemma all right. It’s my problem.
Later, I’m walking across the meadow by the local river. It’s a sunny afternoon and I’m still thinking of the 50,000 warheads as I throw a stick into the river and watch it float and then get swept down into the rapids. I look deep into the rapid’s swirls and see far away; I see silos and computers beneath the earth in Wyoming and Greenham Common; I see the hammer and sickle; I see the whirls of the river’s currents carrying my stick into a military parade in Red Square; I see marching young soldiers and the grim generals. I see all these familiar media scenes, all here all invading my mind, invading my river, my Sunday peace. Why?
Is it that I can’t escape, can’t escape the shadow of the nuclear globe? The shadow follows me, hounds me. There is no escape. Here I am in the tranquil Tasmanian countryside, a sky full of light, and the shadow is there. A problem.
I contemplate. We can’t think about it all the time – the nuclear madness – or else we’d go insane and crawl up into a hole in the ground, like some paranoid wombat, and never come out; it’s all too inconceivable.
But, then again, we can’t ignore the facts: there ARE 50,000 warheads. Fifty thousand. That’s a thousand a week for a year. That’s more than a hundred a day, every day, for a year. That’s a lot of fireworks. Can you imagine a thousand Hiroshimas being blown off every week for the next 50 weeks? I don’t know if I can, or if I even dare to.
It’s too much to consider, isn’t it? But I think we all need to be aware of what’s happening – we can’t turn our backs on reality. We have to do what we can and tell our leaders (even if they ARE politicians) how we feel. How do you feel? I feel … sad.
I am standing by the river in a trance. Sad, not always, but sometimes, like today, because the melancholy shadow is blocking out my Sunday. Sad for all of us, we humans, for having to put up with the indecency of it all, the immoral, amoral, unthinkable crime against humanity; the crime against the children sitting in classrooms learning how to add fractions, write in cursive and fold origami paper – their little fingers fussing with the folds.
The vulgarness of it all: 50,000 warheads! It’s absurd. And thinking about it is a hell of a way to spend a Sunday.
The stick disappears down the river, into the eddies and rushes into smoke and devastation, into sadness.
. . .
It’s night now. The stars are out; clear and cold, they hang above the dark country hills with a distant severity. There severity is one of time, witness and defiance. Securely they glow in their familiar patterns, undisturbed by the turmoil of our times, or any other times. The stars ignore our petty complaints and moods. Looking up, this cold compassion, this stability restores me; it wipes away my melancholy, clears the shadow, and restores my faith.
God isn’t worried about 50,000 warheads: the stars still twinkle, so he or she is going on about his chores unruffled by ours. She is still swirling the earth and rising the stars, still setting the sun and making rain and snow. He’s still flowing rivers and carrying sticks away. Whatever God might be, she’s not getting upset by our problems. He’s staying sane and keeping the seasons turning. I think I’ll stay sane too; I’ll take her example as advice.
I’m not going to fall asleep thinking about war. The stars are clear: there is too much to live for, for one to shadow every moment with doubt. I’ll do what I can, never plead ignorance, and try not to let the shadow get to me. I think I can live with the dilemma and sleep with the problem; I’ll deal with it day by day and have faith. We shall survive.
The night is cold. I sleep. The river flows below the stars. Tomorrow is Monday, a new Tasmanian day.
Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 40 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian. His book "Tasmania: An island dream", can be bought through the Forty South Bookshop.