Conflict

How can you forgive? I look at the conflicts around the world, and I know that forgiveness is not something a group of people can give, and it’s not something they should be asked to give. I think forgiveness can only operate on a personnel level, and the timing has to be right. Forgive too quickly, and the hurt will come back when triggered. Forgive too slowly, and you risk hurting yourself with bitter thoughts and feelings. How can a child, whose family has been broken apart by war, ever learn to forgive what he perceives as the enemy? How can a situation that has been simmering and infected by years of back and forth aggressions ever be resolved? Will annhiliation of the “enemy” heal the wounds? Will it bring back the dead? Can forgiveness ever enter the words of our leaders and politicians? When we forgive, it has to be on a personnal level. We must not ever “forgive” terrorists for indiscriminantly killing innocent people, just as we cannot forgive a retaliation that is so terrible it causes more suffering on an innocent popuation than the terrorist attack did. So what can a nation do? How can a nation defend against aggression without becoming the aggressor? There are many disputes going on around the world – is it possible to untangle the political, the religious, and the territorial conflicts that are causing so much misery? Some are caused by economics or naturel ressources, some stem from age-old ethnic friction, others are from brand new ethnic friction – but each attack leaves victims who are suddenly caught up in a cycle that is as old as life – the survivor will retaliate – there can be no collective forgiveness. The only thing that can stop the cycle is to find out what exactly the attacker needs and make sure they never, ever get it, but not by any retaliation that can hurt innocent bystanders. Instead of attacking Gaza – what if Isreal had gone directly to what the attackers wanted to stop – a closer relationship with the UAE? What if instead of attacking, Israël had negotiated to get all the hostages back all the while pressing the Arab nations to back them in finding a peaceful solution to the problem. Which means identifying the problem, which is that the Palestine people deserve a place to live just as much as the Israelies do. What if, after the twin towers were destroyed, the US had simply used the effusion of good-will and sympathy around the world to build a stronger alliance with those who could help it discover who exactly the perpetraters were, root them and only them out, and instead of distabilizing whole countries, worked with the leaders to make the world safer. Instead, without ever finding out who was behind the attacks, the US went to war against a country that had nothing to do with them, and the result is two failed nations and millions of people thrust into new poverty and hardships in Irak and Afghanistan.

And I hesitated before posting this. However, this article decided me.

Is it right or wrong to post about conflict on social media?, Hannah Jane Parkinson, The Guardian, 11 November 2023

“But Israel-Palestine is a complex, 75-year-old conflict, in a part of the world divided by multiple factions and allegiances. While it’s clear that anyone possessing basic human decency condemns the slaughter of innocents, I’ve heard from individuals who haven’t felt able to post on the matter because they feel ill-informed and are scared of making a mistake on a subject of gravitas in an unforgiving internet culture.

As Jon Ronson wrote in his brilliant book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, people can be dragged for the tiniest indiscretions or misunderstandings, and I don’t feel it is constructive to criticise those who feel uncertain – although I do think that uncertainty can act as an incentive for people to educate themselves. I know what I think about this conflict; not everybody does.”

At any rate, deep in my heart, I know what the US, Russia, and what Isreal is doing right now is wrong. There are enough conflicts around – why create more, when there are viable solutions?

Halloween at the Library

Well, another year, another Halloween … and this time I am workng at a public library where holidays are time for crafts and fun for the kids. We had several projects for them – one of mine was for 0 – 3 years olds (story time in English, then jack-o-lantern decoration with cut out paper), another was origami book marks and origami pumpkins – quite fun and 14 kids showed up! The last one was ‘The Witch is Dead’ spooky story and game that everyone knows… actually – no one knew it – what fun! It was like when I was hosting Halloween parties for my kids.

I cooked some pasta (for guts) and peeled grapes (for the eyes), found a bundle of thin rubbber bands (for the veins) some raw pene (for finger bones) and a real rabbit fur collar for the hair! If no one has played this game before, it’s simple – you gather in a pitch dark room with just the light of a candle, and make up the story of a horrible witch who meets a gruesome end… and then you blow out the candle…

“The witch is dead… and these are her eyes!!” Then you pass the grapes to the nearest child and wait for the horrified screams. The louder the screams, the more the kids love it. They told me they could hear the kids screams fro three rooms away, so I guess it was a big success!

I also painted the faces of about 20 kids – vampires, ghosts, zombies, devils, and one ice queen – lots of work, I was exhausted, but what fun!

Lessons in Kindness

One day I stopped my car and leaned out my window to call to a man by the side of the road. He looked to be in distress. I said, “Can I help you?”

His reply, “Yes, please, I’ve lost my dog. Have you seen her? She’s an old black lab, and I’m afraid she’s been hit by a car.”

I hadn’t seen his dog along the small country road, but I told him I would keep a look out as I drove home, and could I do anything else? It seemed such a small matter to me, to have stopped in the first place and to tell him I would look as I drove along the road to my home. We exchanged names. I took his number in case I found the dog, and I drove home, my eyes scanning both sides of the road. I found no dog. I wondered for a while if he’d found her, then I forgot. A week or so later, I saw the man again in town. He recognized me first and waved me over. He’d found his dog. She’d found some smelly carcass in the woods and had come home by herself, reeking of dead animal, limping with exhaustion but otherwise fine. Then he thanked me. I asked him why? I hadn’t done anything. He said, “you were the only one to stop that day. You were the only one to offer help. You were very kind.”

I didn’t see it. I had been kind? I thought I’d simply been human. Kindness, to me, meant going out of one’s way to help someone. To me, kindness was when my mother stopped a woman on the street and told her she could come stay at our house until she got back on her feet. The woman had been pushing a shopping cart full suitcases, and had four little girls with her. She’d been kicked out of her house by her husband. My mother, upon hearing her story, found her a lawyer and kept in touch long enough to make sure the woman and her daughters were taken care of. To me, that was kindness. But when I told my mother, she insisted that it was just being human.

Once I was flying back to Europe on my birthday. I was leaving my home, going to an uncertain future. I was in a bad mood, depressed, a little scared, and all that made me feel angry. I decided I would sit in my seat and not speak to anyone, but when I started filling out the card for customs, the man next to me saw it was my birthday, leaned over, and asked me why I was flying that day. I said I was just going back to work. I was still in a bad mood so I curled up in my seat and tried to sleep. At midnight, three hours after take-off, it was my birthday. A tap on my shoulder. The stewardess offering me a glass of champagne – from the man next to me – for my birthday. I was surprised, and a little sheepish for being so churlish before. I thanked him, and we started to talk. This is what I found out. He was from Brazil, and he was going to Paris to collect his son’s body. His son had been working in Paris on a construction site, and had had an accident. The embassy called him. He was to go to the morgue to identify his son’s remains, then eveything had been organized for him to fly back to Brazil for the funeral. I was devastated for him – we were both crying at this point. I was thinking how kind he was to offer me a glass of champagne when he was mourning, how awful it must be to lose a child. Then there was the problem of language. His English was rudimentary and he spoke no French at all. He had booked a room at a place near the morgue. He had never been to Paris. He told me about his son. Showed me pictures of him. I suddenly thought of my roommate, Carmen, who was Brazilien. In those days, there were no cellphones. I told him to wait when we got through customs, and we found a payphone. I called Carmen and passed him the phone.

Carmen was incredible. She met him at his hotel. She accompanied him to the morgue and to the prefecture, helped him with his papers. She stayed with him from the moment he arrived until the day he left. We had one dinner together. He gave me a small wooden charm, and he said it was for luck. I still have it. He told me I was a kind person. But again, I had to disagree. I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t the one to accompany him, to translate for him, to give four days out of her busy job to make sure he was OK. I had simply made a phone call. Carmen did the rest. He said, yes, Carmen is an amazing person. A heroine. But I had been kind – kind enough to see a solution to his problem, even though I could not help him, I put him in contact with someone who could. In that way, I’d been more than kind.

Perhaps, in this world, we could use a little more kindness. In my experience, it doesn’t take much: a moment of time, a question, “Can I help you?”, a glass of champagne and a birthday wish, a thought, a connection. Real heros like Carmen and my mother are precious and hard to emulate. But kindness – that – anyone can do.

Librarians are Sexy

I got a new job and have decided that glasses are a plus for working in a library. I can peer over them, lift them to look closer at things, push my hair back with them, chew thoughtfully on the temple tips, and look severe when there is too much noise.

The job is ‘no stress’, although I am very busy. Who knew there was so much work to do to catalogue and shelve books? There is constant coming and going, books being dropped off and borrowed, and there are also workshops for children of all ages, reading time – and this takes quite a bit of planning beforehand.

Our library (actually media library) is small but brand new (I was there at the opening – 400 people, a band playing, and speeches by important people – and loads and loads of work registering everyone and giving out all the new library cards.)

So here are some pictures of some of the workshops – one was a watercolor workshop, and I also prepared a huge fresque for the kids to color!

April girl

Always Marry An April Girl
By Ogden Nash

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true —
I love April, I love you.

Last year was hard although broken by an idyllic trip to my childhood home in the Adirondacks. It ended on a high note, with a trip to Florida and a visit with brothers and sisters I hadn’t seen in years. I got back to France and was anticipating looking for a new job, trotting obediently off to the unemployment office, sitting behind a desk, only to hear the person in charge of my dossier saying, “well, because of your age, we won’t be bothering you much with (needless) job searching.” After hearing that, I went out and looked by myself, finding an announcement for a librarian and I sent out my CV and cover letter, knowing chances were slim, but still hopeful. So far, I’ve had two interviews with the HR and the head librarian, as well as the mayor of the town, and an elected official. So chances are, before too long, I’ll have a new job in a library!

February woes, March madness, April is the cruelest month

The Waste Land by TS Eliot is an interesting, difficult poem to grasp. I never really understood it before, although I read it for the first time in my teens, and thought it all about the war, and the decline and fall of a glittering, depraved society. Now, nearly 50 years on, I read it again, and find new meaning. (Just as I found new meaning when I was in my twenties and thirties – and each part spoke to me differently.

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow….

(And now we’ll skip a ways down, to where Tirisias sees, because this is the part that spoke to me the loudest this time. In his endnotes, Eliot explained, “Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character,’ is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.”

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronising kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’

Bright and Dark

As an artist, I look at the world through colors. They can affect my mood, but mostly it’s just a case of seeing something and thinking, ‘naples yellow with a touch of emerald green. Cool shadows. Look like ultramarine blue.‘

Well, maybe not so detailed, but everything I see is broken down into colorful shapes with highlights and shadows. Maybe it’s because I’m nearsighted, and the world, without my glasses, is just a bur. Or maybe it’s from years and years of thinking about what certain scenes would look like on paper.

Sometimes it’s just colors, like Black Pony sleeping in the Sun, and sometimes it’s more detailed, like the river scene.

And here is my desk, with all my colored pencils in jars according to hue.

Sorry, I’m easily overwhelmed

Time slips by – one day it’s Wednesday and you’re walking to work. Your heart is thumping because the day before, everything seemed to go sideways. You haven’t been happy in your job for a while. The new bosses are young, dynamic, and have made sure that you feel like a dinosaur ever single day. Your way of doing things is not their way, and of course you try to adapt. It is their office now, their work, and you are just a thorn in their side, despite your efforts. Things have come to a head, and you have managed to negotiate an end to your contract, to your advantage no less, but their has been too much shouting, too much recrimination – you’ve kept your head down too long and you feel beaten into the ground. But it is the last day at work, so you go – you’ve helped train the two new women hired to replace you, and through the last month, you’ve tried to keep the atmosphere light so that the patients don’t notice. You smile, smile, smile… even though you feel like just getting up and walking out. But you are anything but a quitter. So you stay, and finally, it’s the last day.

I suppose I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed. I did the same job for 12 years, but the last year has been difficult, and I just couldn’t find the energy to write. I didn’t realize that creativity depletes you, just like stress, and worry, and illness. When I stopped my job, end of December 2022, I spent a week just sleeping; then I started to paint. Drawings and paintings flowed out of me, and I managed to pull myself together more and more. Now, words are coming back, and with them, stories.

But it’s made me wonder about the myth of the starving artist. Yes, there are artists and authors who have managed to paint and write under horrific strain – but how many more talented people are slogging through life in exhausting jobs, cominng home too tired to imagine for an instant sitting down to write or paint? How much creativity is out there just waiting to shine – but crushed under teh weight of depression? If I, (an entitled, spoiled woman who had a job she mostly liked, a warm home and supportive family and friends, healthy children, and enough to eat) found it nearly impossible to be creative while I held down a full time job, than how many people who truly have problems are being stifled? It frustrates me to think of all the books, art, music, dancing, and beauty we are missing because people are being ground down by our unfair economic system.

Of course, now some people will be muttering “socialist dreamer”, “commie utopist”, “woke wanker” (OK, I made that last one up, but it’s true that as soon as someone starts suggesting that our current system might be horribly unfair, there are those who think that that person is out to empty their bank accounts and give it all to drug addicts and slackers.) But it’s not that. I would like to find a way to have a shorter work week – shorter hours even – higher wages, better healthcare insurance, more parks and gardens, more trees, better public transportation, and more affordable and comfortable housing. Seriously – is this too much to ask? Instead, they (They – the conglomerats that rule us) are pushing our retirement age back, threatening social security benefits, and ignoring global warming. While the solution is as simple as this: tax the rich fairly. Yes, that simply means Tax corporations and levy a 50% death tax on anything over 200k. (in the US, the exemption cutoff is now 12 million – wrap your heads around that…) Tax capital gains. Invest in education, not arms. The list is long, and oh so easy to imagine – and completely inoffensive to anyone in the middle class income bracket. Well, as long as I’m dreaming – how about a fairy godmother for everyone, with a magic wand that will do nothing more than smack some sense into people who think that we’re all out for their guns.

Oh dear – I see my post about creativity and the sense of feeling overwhelmed has turned into a political rant. I suppose I ought to go drink some herbal tea and get ready for my meeting at the unemployment office to try and find a new job before I become too creative and do something drastic, like vote for Bernie Sanders (I would) or join the protests in the streets against raising the retirement age (I want to).

Until then, I will go back to my painting, which should be dry by now, to add the details. And so I shall- and wish everyone a stress-free, creative day.

Sounds for sleep

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

Alexa, open sounds for sleep.

I can open Sounds for Sleep. What would you like to hear? I can –

Play rainstorm

Would you like to hear today’s weather? There is a rainstorm predicted –

No, play Sounds for Sleep Rainstorm.

I can play Sounds for Sleep. What do you want to hear?

Rainstorm!

I don’t know that one. Do you mean FarawayTrain?

No, I mean rainstorm. Rain. Storm.

I don’t know that one. Do you mean Waterfalls?

No, I mean… oh, forget it. Sure. Why not. Alexa, play Waterfalls.

I don’t know that one. Do you mean Rainstorm?

Thanks to Rochelle for hosting Friday Fictioneers 

Two grandchildren

I felt as if I’d found myself when my children were born. They gave me confidence because suddenly I had someone else besides “me” to look out for. I was never very good about looking after myself, but I felt strong and fierce with my babies. When my grandchildren were born, it was another sort of emotion. When I held them – looking back and forth between the child in my arms and the grown-up person (who used to be my baby!) in front of me – it was as if I could feel all the weight of my years, but also the weight of my parents and grandparents behind me. It made me realize that I’d lost a little of my identity when my children were born, but I gave it up gladly. It felt constructive, as if I were building something, but I didn’t quite know what it would be. What I didn’t realize then was that I was forging a chain.

My mother in law died last week. She was 93, and fell and broke her hip. Less than six days later, she died of pneumonia. Although she had been old, she had been in good health until then, so it was a shock when she died. When we gathered for her funeral in a small chapel, and I saw her in her coffin, it was another shock. She’d always been so energetic, even in the last years of her life when she could hardly get out of bed. But she’d lived alone, with part – time caretakers, and had mostly kept her wit. My husband went to see her every other day, and a month before she passed on, my son stopped by to present her great-grandchild to her and she had been thrilled. Her other great-grandchild was at her funeral, making three generations of mourners. We told some stories, recited a poem, and shed some tears. It’s hard to say goodbye.

Perhaps were are nothing in this world; we pass through it like shooting stars – trees last longer, the oceans are eternal – but we are just flashes of light. Last week we said goodbye to a vibrant, funny, energetic woman, whose life had been full of both glamour and regrets. She would have liked to have lived in the south of France, she told me one day – with plenty of sunshine, near the ocean, in a village where her dream had been to run a little shop. But she was one of those people who live very much in the present, and her interests were centered firmly around her children.

I look at my two new grandchildren, and I wish them all the best. I wish that their lives be full of joy, peace, and prosperity. I am glad they are links in the chain that is my family – but ultimately, that they are part of the web that is humanity.