Posted by Noreen Kruzich on January 27, 2012 at 4:05 PM
A dream I had as I lay close to the earth in a tent along the shores of Lake Superior one summer’s night.
There I stood on the land. People all around me. An urgency in each one of them . A realm of chaos.
I instinctively knew that I stood at a site of significant historical importance—a battlefield of sorts. Assignments were being handed out. Living as a writer and reporter much of my life, I understood that this was the agenda here too. The assignment editor pointed at each of his victims and reeled off their tasks sending them off one by one. Until finally, I being the last to receive a story to investigate, upon being handed it I frowned for I thought it of little importance. My assignment—how to rid the body of morphine.
But the more I contemplated it, the more I recognized its virtues, the more powerful it became. It, I deemed, was a lesson from the spirit of all things—that to be able to show life, history as it is, you cannot hide the pain; you cannot suppress it, for it must be laid out on the page, as it was drawn out in history at that exact moment. Pain and joy must be endured by the reader.
I began to see the relevance of my assignment— History with facts and dates, measurements and pictures holds little relevance and meaning without knowing the emotional and spiritual motivation that would be behind it. This would be my guide.
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