[pathos worldview] Though this won't help you, Gaza

But when I crudely stitch an honest thought
My falt'ring voice will crack between the lines...

When I am upset, I usually rant to my dear friends, and may turn out a few choice phrases, trying to both describe and alleviate my condition at the same time. Poetry may come out then, in bursts of consolation. But when I am truly disturbed, wholly unsettled, I can't write. I shrink from writing because I can't put something sensible together. I can't wax eloquent when my mind is spinning. But my mind is spinning, and I'm writing now. So forgive me if there's more emotion in this than eloquence.

I burnt my garlic toast just now, rushing to the computer, listening to the TV, trying to found out what was going on. In Gaza. The TV is on and there's a call-in discussion program, in Arabic. They are talking about what's going on, in Gaza. I simultaneously listen to the caller whilst frantically opening blogger to spill some of this out of my head. The ancient Arabs were unique in their ability to wax poetic no matter how dire the situation, and most educated Arabs can do the same. The caller proceeds in flowing prose, a prayer, a controlled cadence, he says, "We understand the desire to free the one soldier, what about the 400 children in Israeli jails?" He says it in more eloquent terms but I can't think well enough to remember them. His voice quavers at the end, but his sentences are flawless. The next caller is not so controlled. His voice is shaky from the start. "Brother, he says, although the word is a sigh in itself, "I feel like I'm going to incinerate."

I have just watched bridges broken, missiles hitting, streaks of powder in the sky. I have watched an man's elederly mother refuse to evacuate her house, probably because she is senile and doesn't know what's going on. That's the difference here, in the middle east. People see it with their own eyes. Most households have either CNN or BBC world, a few ones have Fox. But unlike my home in North America, there're the Arabic channels. There are the live images. On both sides. But that's another story.

The story I'm watching intermittently is the one which had been unfolding surrealy in front of my eyes. Gaza bombed, thousands are left without water or electricity. The power plant has been hit; it may tke months to replace destroyed transformers. The deafening sound of missle strikes, one right in the middle of a BBC interview with a resident. The reporter ducks and turns around - the man breifly flinches, then resumes talking.

( I stop posting briefly to hang out laundry from the washing machine. It seems inane. But the intellectually unchalleging monotony of pegging pyjamas in the balcony calms me somewhat.)

I try to sort it through in my head. The desire to return a kidnapped soldier, understandable. The decision to punish an entire community, involved or uninvolved, mwomen and childeren, unfathomable. A single soldier, captured while fighting, who sparks a full assault on an already suffering people. The soldier is named, about my age. The 400 children - below the age of 18, in Israeli prisons, who won't be exchanged for his sake, are faceless and nameless. His life is toted as important but his government won't do the one thing that would almost certainly save him. Rather, they do the one thing that make very grim the prospect of his recovery.

No exchange. Then no electricity. No water. I think of the irony - I just spent the better part of the day with no running water due to scheduled plumbing. There were buckets of water though, enough for me to do the dishes and my ablution and whatever I needed. And I knew it was coming. Yet still I lingered impatiently at the faucet.
I'm upset at my own idiocy. My own incompetence.

Then I remember a female caller on the show, long ended. "Let the people know, we are in their prayers." And I realise it's the best that I can do. So I decide to stop posting, and do the only thing I can do that will help the most.

I don't bother to read what I've written since I'm certain it's drivel. I know there are mistakes but there are worse out there in the world that I can't fix. I'm tired and upset. I want to pray and I want to sleep. I need a hug. I want to hug a child.