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A calamity is, by all accounts, inconvenient, unplanned for, unfolding, messy. By definition, an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress; a disaster.

A disaster is rarely convenient, but disaster can be beautiful. Click. Flames licking the window frames as memories of four generations dissolve. Broken skin with fresh wet blood shining at its seams. Click. The scale of the disaster can’t be measured in inches, in pixels, in carats or tons. Maybe in heartbeats skipped, time sucked away, tears or scars left behind. Click. Maybe it can’t be measured at all, but it can be seen and it can be felt.

Inconvenience is defined as trouble caused to one’s personal requirements or comfort. It is inconvenient to change trains. It is inconvenient to have your car torn in half by a fallen tree. Click. Life has so many inconveniences that some become convenient; the inconvenience of calamity can bring the convenience of spectacle.

To capture the inconvenience of the calamity, the discomfort in distress, to change the setting and to smile at the memory of the upset. To cry at the memory of the upset. Click. To be there and to extend the life of that moment is to hold on to the beauty in the pain. The real calamity might be to turn away, to avoid the inconvenience.

Foreword by Anna Bradley Smith