For as long as I can remember, writing has been both an extension of
imagination and a way of figuring out what I truly believe. Through
high school journalism I quickly discovered that I enjoyed the
challenges of deadlines and trying to figure out the hidden and
compelling drama behind the most ordinary stories. I guess in this
sense writing was a form of both puzzle solving and exploration—and a
chance to do it with elan and personality.
This penchant for letting writing lead as much as record carried over to
my professional career as an ecologist and environmentalist. Whenever I
was part of study or research team I was always recruited to convert
the “collective wisdom” of a group or research team into an intelligible
form. The recording process almost always led to new questions and
ideas that spurred further investigation and occasionally more powerful
ways to protect animals, habitat, clean air, and water.
Whether I’m writing novels, memoirs, science, social commentary or
screenplays, I seem to be guided by an invisible hand that only
grudgingly accedes to convention and is always on the lookout for a
powerful irony, a novel metaphor or a revolutionary idea. I would like
to think that my writing provokes, inflames, and evokes a certain
disquietude that all may not be as it appears.
In Dire Straits: Keeping Spirit Alive When the Wheels Come Off is my
third and most ambitious published book. It is even more provocative
than the other two, confronting head-on conventional ideas about healing
from rheumatoid and auto-immune illnesses and examining closely the
many tenuous assumptions that support conventional treatment
approaches.
The book also jumps to a higher level--sketching out the possibility
that immune-system disease bears an uncanny similarity to the system
breakdowns now being experienced for planet earth as a whole. In each
case, the remedy may be a guerrilla kind of strategy that draws upon the
full power of individual reason, imagination, and higher intention.
Jim Currie
Author of IN DIRE STRAITS: KEEPING SPIRIT ALIVE WHEN THE WHEELS COME OFF