A sudden pull, from throat to gut,
a heartache, dull, and thick and quivering. It’s the spark of reactionary emotion to an image I did not want or expect to see. (Indeed, how can one expect to see such a thing, unless seeking it, unless visiting a source of information where such a horrid sight would be presented). I was not visiting such a source. Or so I thought. Now I realize, my source of common, normal, casual information - my “social network” - is no longer casual. Hasn’t been so, for many years now, though I’m just now admitting the weight of this to myself. Too many links to too many sad things. An image I casually glimpsed tonight, just now - just cannot be unseen. Cannot be un-thought. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/09/03/437132793/photo-of-dead-3-year-old-syrian-refugee-breaks-hearts-around-the-world I’ve seen many a horrific truth or scandal detailed deftly in digital telling. I’ve even similarly reacted, with that pull of dread and an instant wet eye. But nothing, ever, made me reel the way this image did tonight, just now - now that I have a child. I cannot see an image of a child, drowned, now that I have a child. I cannot see this image and forget it, now that I have a child. A sweet young being, its short life curtailed, its sweet young body awash on a beach. I cannot un-see this, I cannot un-think this. The heart which beats within me rips at its many-times-healed sutures, it swells with its overstated sensitivities and sends pumps of pained breaths through the body which is me. Hysteria. The brain which hovers in my skull beams its confusions and lyric magic bandages of spiritualized ideas of balance light and dark and la la la la la! There is no explaining! And no temperance, in any atomic grain of instance, in any divided pixel of presence, in any damn dose of regurgitated perception. It’s hell. Plain hell on earth. Now that I have a child, I know, because just the iota of thought of seeing him (my child) in place of the Syrian child swallowed by the Mediterranean, shows me a glimpse of hell on Earth. And I get to take my next breath in and then exhale my next breath out, and get to stand and walk and eat, and cuddle my baby when he awakes… These heartfelt moments of appreciating the tiny things of life are common enough, lovely and poignant and honest enough. And they make my life that much more rich… And I, and those of the rich, full, rainbow tribes, what are we doing - how are we accountable? We’re missing something. We’re gifting our joy to the ether, we’re pouring our love into the Earth… and it’s still not enough. Hasn’t been enough. To see a drowned child, because he could never arrive at safe haven… we haven’t done enough.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
"Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us, can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about." Elsewhere:Instagram
Soundcloud Last.fm Music Profile My short-lived Wordpress blog Alex Chemer Photography (my father) Vera Rey Fine Art (my mother) Categories
All
Archives
February 2022
|