Excerpt from:

TURNING TO THE DOWNFALL

CLARISSA STADLER

Catastrophes are forced farewells. That doesn’t make things any easier. Farewells in themselves are unpleasant enough. There are no so-called cheerful farewells. When you separate from a person, a place or a habit to “start all over again”, “finally to be free” from whatever, you have to leave something behind, detach yourself from something.

After a catastrophe nothing is like it was, nor are we the same as we were. A catastrophe is a tool of fate that robs people of their last illusion of autonomy. Suddenly, like actors in a role, we have nothing more to do. We become viewers and have to get acquainted with a rather unpopular modern feeling: powerlessness. Just when we had got so used to wheeling, dealing and feeling, playing the boss over life and death. Making a fortune, making a child, getting rid of a child, postponing age, pushing aside death, putting cancer in its place, combatting hunger, cultivating stem cells, splitting atoms, all of it so creative because we did it.

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