In memory

“A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip and we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.

“The company commander came over to us and told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, and he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, and we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … 

--The Guardian.

They started it, we don't now care whose dead. You're dead. You deserve to be dead.

--Joan Rivers.

We don't count the dead. We don't do body counts.

~~

What did I think when I saw this picture? Not: here is a Muslim, a Palestinian but: here is a human being, made helpless; here is a father with his daughter. 

And you can't but help think that the images coming out of Gaza are like the suffering you might see in great art, in the museums where a few people go to remind themselves of how they've overcome the brutality of a former age. We can look at it, from a distance, and have fine feelings (even better if topped off with a latte from Costa).

In memory...do we imagine we were human beings once?

~~

At 5.12 a.m. the grey clouds scatter and the sun is there, rigorous and inescapable. The heat rises from the earth, thick and heavy, and you think to yourself: the sun has been there all the time, even during the night, waiting. 

The year draws to a close-an odd one, this. You feel that no time has passed whatsoever and yet, at the same time, you are the only one to grow old. Tell tale signs: when you haven't got the energy to argue your point or listen to the wide-eyed enthusiasm of younger people; when you start to say (and actually think): "in the bigger scheme of things.."

When you are young there is a centre to things; older, you come to increasingly think of the periphery, all kinds of borders and the centre, if it holds, is only something re-imagined. As Hoban would say: you start to wonder if you're a bit player in someone else's story or that you're reading the wrong script.

The most grounded, the most centred of people today are those who have walked away, unscathed, those who have kept their memories alive in small day-to-day details of ordinary living. 

~~

The bleeding heart liberals are beginning to get on my wick. They want to make a public statement, the darlings: we affirm the importance of free speech, democratic life...the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty..etc. etc. (what, no Miranda?).

And what, prey, are your views on the sky? Tables with four legs?