i read, watched, and listened in horror to some fragments of the terror that is being experienced in the middle-east... it is very distressing to watch a traumatized old man who's just lost his wife, home and hopes when the rockets/bombs fell... or to see families being separated in their attempts to escape... or civilians being injured, maimed, shredded...
it's just incomprehensible that everyone is relying on violence to get what they want... and they themselves are behaving like the terror they wish to curb.
all this madness... it will not end... it will not end... the pain... the pain...
Manjack home from the wars walked down the street ---
bent like a bow his body round its great scar ---
and held his head upright. I saw his eyes
flaring and fixed, a tiger or a dark star.
Pain, what ist it? The sycthe turned under the ribs,
the soft explosion in the belly that means death,
the hornet where were berries, the snake in flowers,
the ice about the heart, the lung that leaks its breath ---
that which drives out love, hunger, thirst or hate;
the trap that waits, the precipice past hope
upon whose edge we walk, how delicately ---
the loaded whip no shoulders can escape.
Pain, what is it? That which keeps alive
amoebae doubling from the acid; pain
that forces flesh to wisdom: hedge of swords
beside the road from protoplasm to man.
Pain that fierce darkness thrusting at all life
that drives it up to light; pain the black No
that knifes us in blind alleys; pain that can only say
You have chosen wrong; this is no way to go.
Manjack home from the wars walked down the street,
and in his flesh a fire that ate him lean.
Vision of famine, death with blazing eyes,
what shall we do to save ourselves from Pain?
~~~Judith Wright~~~
from Woman to Man, 1949, in Collected Poems
like I said...rot's started. I just cannot understand why USA is still siding Isreal..saying that the ceasefire and truce would be a 'fake' peace just doesn't cut it. I just cannot comprehend why isreal still doesn't learn..they are not the victims. They are equally at fault for all the violence and tension in the middle east.....
on a side note, I just hope we speed up the search for other alternate energy resources and rely less on oil.
Posted by: gor on Friday, 28 July, 2006 at 11:28 hrsit's a farce...
was watching the PBS programme: American Masters series, and they chronicled Walter Cronkite's legacy as the anchor-man at post-war CBS and he helped bring to the attention of the lay-americans that the Vietnam-war was not achieving it's means... this very snobbery of imposing peace and democracy in another part of the world is really not how things could work by starting a war in the supposed belief that the removal of the 'tyrant' can then allow for peace; they simply don't see the complicated and fragile social fabric of everyone involved, not just the leaders of the various groups but also the ordinary people... 50 years later, we are seeing history repeating itself again and again ...
it also just seems so pointless and frustrating that neither groups involved can/want to step back and think, well, there must be other means to the mess than violence...
BP has started using corn and other vegetable fuel options... tidal power should get more limelight... how about using up some of the heat from the crazy heat-wave?! and then the cold from extreme cold?!
nuclear power is theoretically very attractive but highly risky and problematic for the environment...
i can't help but think of DUNE... i should really read the book... but the movie is excellent, no?!
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