Sometimes the saddest hearts
Are hidden by the biggest smiles
Monday, 24 November 2008
Sunday, 16 November 2008
The Painted Picture
The young girl stood in the mud-track road, and behind her the landscape was on fire.
"Let me pass", I shouted over the roar, but she just looked at me, her head on one side, her dark hair flat against her skin.
"Let me pass", I shouted, and my horse reared, its eyes and nostril wide, sweat matting its hair (and in the mud ran streams of water mixed with streams of blood).
"You cannot pass" replied the girl, and her voice was quiet but rang like a bell.
(In the distance the villages were burning, and people were screaming and running from the tall, dark, crooked figures that followed them in jerking steps)
"Please let me pass", I shouted once more, my eyes in the distance; I had to help.
"You cannot pass" the girl said again, and this time the earth shook with her voice.
I looked at her, at those empty black eyes, as lightening shook the sky above us. "Who are you?" I whispered. The girl did not reply, but continued to look at me, her face blank and relaxed. "Why are you doing this?" I shouted, and my horse reared again as I stuggled to control it.
"It is not me" her voice was high, petulant, "this is your doing, surely you know that?"
And then I screamed and the edges of my vision began to curl and blacken like burning paper, and the scene behind the girl began to fall apart so that there was only me and her. And as burning strips fell from the sky she moved closer: her skin flayed then dissolved away, and her jaw stretched forward until her face was like that of a horse; her arms extended to a grotesque length, and her hands turned into fleshy claws.
The creature reached towards me and I could not move. It was blind, but its talons sought my eyes, grasping my forehead. We were joined; my torso growing out of its body, and all around us there seemed to be fire and smoke, though all was blackness (yet rented with a sick unnatural light). We were falling backwards, down, down, as the horses mouth moved towards mine, its lips curling back in hatred.
I was lost.
This was Hell.
"Let me pass", I shouted over the roar, but she just looked at me, her head on one side, her dark hair flat against her skin.
"Let me pass", I shouted, and my horse reared, its eyes and nostril wide, sweat matting its hair (and in the mud ran streams of water mixed with streams of blood).
"You cannot pass" replied the girl, and her voice was quiet but rang like a bell.
(In the distance the villages were burning, and people were screaming and running from the tall, dark, crooked figures that followed them in jerking steps)
"Please let me pass", I shouted once more, my eyes in the distance; I had to help.
"You cannot pass" the girl said again, and this time the earth shook with her voice.
I looked at her, at those empty black eyes, as lightening shook the sky above us. "Who are you?" I whispered. The girl did not reply, but continued to look at me, her face blank and relaxed. "Why are you doing this?" I shouted, and my horse reared again as I stuggled to control it.
"It is not me" her voice was high, petulant, "this is your doing, surely you know that?"
And then I screamed and the edges of my vision began to curl and blacken like burning paper, and the scene behind the girl began to fall apart so that there was only me and her. And as burning strips fell from the sky she moved closer: her skin flayed then dissolved away, and her jaw stretched forward until her face was like that of a horse; her arms extended to a grotesque length, and her hands turned into fleshy claws.
The creature reached towards me and I could not move. It was blind, but its talons sought my eyes, grasping my forehead. We were joined; my torso growing out of its body, and all around us there seemed to be fire and smoke, though all was blackness (yet rented with a sick unnatural light). We were falling backwards, down, down, as the horses mouth moved towards mine, its lips curling back in hatred.
I was lost.
This was Hell.
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Don't stop
One of the things that scares me the most,
Is that one day it will stop hurting;
That I'll become satisfied with what I've got,
And that I'll give up trying.
Is that one day it will stop hurting;
That I'll become satisfied with what I've got,
And that I'll give up trying.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Remembering Abkhazia
First we hear the wailing; women crying among the silver-blue leaves of the olive trees. The sound appears to be coming from somewhere behind a ramshackle building made of bits of corrugated iron and clay bricks with bits of straw sticking out of them. Rounding the side of the building, we find a group of perhaps 20 - 30 people gathered around a roughly rectangular pit in the ground.
They are burying a son. He was 19 years old. A freedom fighter or terrorist; a terrorist or a freedom fighter, it doesn't really matter now. He looks hardly more than a boy in the photo clutched by his brother (his lips pressed tightly together, his face grim). What does his mother care of the conflict now? Her son is gone; she knows nothing but this.
His brother speaks to us of his hatred of all Georgians. They used to break bread together; now they try to kill one another. The pain and suffering of these people is all too obvious, but I cannot truly know what it feels like. It is not I who have lost a brother; a son.
Still, I cannot help but think: "What if this boy was also responsible for a scene such as this, 50 miles away over the de facto border? What if somewhere there a mother is weeping too? A mother who also now knows nothing of conflict and hatred, only the pain of losing her child?"
He would surely be hailed as a hero by this poor, war-torn community. And perhaps, 50 miles away, some other son is being hailed as just such a hero by his friends and relatives. But in the heart of a conflict, such paradoxes are often forgotten: ignored by those who control the conflicts, many miles away, sitting in leather armchairs in spacious, well-equipped offices, and pushed to the back of the minds of those immersed in it by the pain of suffering - the anguish of losing those that they love.
What bitter madness. Spilt blood begets more spilt blood, and more mothers are left to weep. The blood mixes with the handfuls of soil that are tossed in on the wooden box. Behind the roughly-constructed lid of that box lies the boy that was once a child, once a baby, once a stirring in a mother's belly.
The earth drops like rain, and tears wet the ground.
They are burying a son. He was 19 years old. A freedom fighter or terrorist; a terrorist or a freedom fighter, it doesn't really matter now. He looks hardly more than a boy in the photo clutched by his brother (his lips pressed tightly together, his face grim). What does his mother care of the conflict now? Her son is gone; she knows nothing but this.
His brother speaks to us of his hatred of all Georgians. They used to break bread together; now they try to kill one another. The pain and suffering of these people is all too obvious, but I cannot truly know what it feels like. It is not I who have lost a brother; a son.
Still, I cannot help but think: "What if this boy was also responsible for a scene such as this, 50 miles away over the de facto border? What if somewhere there a mother is weeping too? A mother who also now knows nothing of conflict and hatred, only the pain of losing her child?"
He would surely be hailed as a hero by this poor, war-torn community. And perhaps, 50 miles away, some other son is being hailed as just such a hero by his friends and relatives. But in the heart of a conflict, such paradoxes are often forgotten: ignored by those who control the conflicts, many miles away, sitting in leather armchairs in spacious, well-equipped offices, and pushed to the back of the minds of those immersed in it by the pain of suffering - the anguish of losing those that they love.
What bitter madness. Spilt blood begets more spilt blood, and more mothers are left to weep. The blood mixes with the handfuls of soil that are tossed in on the wooden box. Behind the roughly-constructed lid of that box lies the boy that was once a child, once a baby, once a stirring in a mother's belly.
The earth drops like rain, and tears wet the ground.
Shopping List
Milk £1.20
Bread 75p
Butter
Bailing out UK banks: £250 billion
Providing aid to roughly 4 million starving Zimbabweans: £70 million
Olive oil 500 ml £2.50
Immediate aid to 2004 Tsunami victims from UK government (> 250,000 killed, many more made homeless): £75 million
War in Iraq (Immediate costs incurred by US): Order £300 billion
Estimated eventual cost to US of Iraq invasion: Order £500 billion -£3 trillion
Parsnips
chee
Estimated cost of meeting the Millennium Development Goals when they were first proposed: £20 - £30 billion per year for 16 years = < £600 billion in total (to be shared among all the nations signed up to the MDGs)
Chicken wings £2.50 ish Curry sauce (x2 Monday and Fri)
Overall costs of Iraq war to US (estimated by Pentagon prior to invasion) ~ £25 billion
Cost of antiretroviral drugs for management of AIDs in Nigeria, approx £34 per person per month
Replacing Trident nuclear arsenal: £20 billion
Deoderant for Tim £1.50 (maybe)
Bread 75p
Butter
Bailing out UK banks: £250 billion
Providing aid to roughly 4 million starving Zimbabweans: £70 million
Olive oil 500 ml £2.50
Immediate aid to 2004 Tsunami victims from UK government (> 250,000 killed, many more made homeless): £75 million
War in Iraq (Immediate costs incurred by US): Order £300 billion
Estimated eventual cost to US of Iraq invasion: Order £500 billion -£3 trillion
Parsnips
chee
paracetamol
Estimated cost of meeting the Millennium Development Goals when they were first proposed: £20 - £30 billion per year for 16 years = < £600 billion in total (to be shared among all the nations signed up to the MDGs)
Chicken wings £2.50 ish Curry sauce (x2 Monday and Fri)
Overall costs of Iraq war to US (estimated by Pentagon prior to invasion) ~ £25 billion
Cost of antiretroviral drugs for management of AIDs in Nigeria, approx £34 per person per month
Replacing Trident nuclear arsenal: £20 billion
Deoderant for Tim £1.50 (maybe)
Autumn Mornings
I love those crisp autumn mornings,
The leaves on the trees golden,
The sky clear and the Sun bright,
Mist rising off the dewey grass.
Everything is still,
And I am cocooned in warm clothing,
Though my nose and cheeks are cold.
It's like a new start,
Fresh and invigorating,
The cleansing of the world.
The leaves on the trees golden,
The sky clear and the Sun bright,
Mist rising off the dewey grass.
Everything is still,
And I am cocooned in warm clothing,
Though my nose and cheeks are cold.
It's like a new start,
Fresh and invigorating,
The cleansing of the world.
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