EMBODIMENT OF HOPE
Paris, 13/11/2016
© Haris Metaxa.
All Rights Reserved, Reproduction Prohibited
I've been so depressed lately
with the upcoming anniversary of the Paris terror attacks.
I did not want to remember, to live that experience
again.
Feeling raped at home, in my street, in my town,
in my
intimacy, in my freedom, in my life.
It happened a year ago, like tomorrow actually.
It was on the 13th of November last year,
13/11/2015,
a bright, crispy, sunny day made for love and beauty
and instead crazed Death came out of nowhere
riding ordinary family cars
and killing from the open windows,
wearing the face of young boys,
killing with brainwashed rage
on street corners,
erasing with blood innocent people
sitting in terraces
enjoying life
ordinary, young and not rich people
sitting at cheap terraces,
they did not know the war had come to town
that It was already raging in the streets,
they were blissfully unaware
like the rest of Paris and Parisians,
like all of us even now,
they couldn’t even suspect something was wrong,
that the battlefield
between terror and life
was taken into the streets;
In the young Bohemian streets,
around Canal Saint Martin
starting with rue Bichat
and then,
target of simultaneous multiple attacks,
very fast becoming a real triangle of death:
two attacks in rue Bichat,
then more behind République square,
more shootings near Parmentier, on rue Fontaine de Rois,
while close to Bastille,
the Bataclan Club just around the corner
was attacked.
What I am telling you is a triangle of Death
with rue Bichat at its centre.
I repeat,
what shocked us most was
that when the day after finally came
and in hearing the news
we discovered we had just been at a centre of real terror
and we had become survivors,
past events were not any longer just whispers,
or rumours
and suppositions
as they have been during this incredible,
unbelievable
night of terror
spent outdoors
since the area of the attacks was cordoned off
for security.
We discovered at last what actually happened,
by who,
who did the shooting,
why and where.
It was only then it became clear the killers came from within,
all very young,
brainwashed
into armed Muslim Fundamentalism,
they were playing out a flesh and blood video game,
with no sense of reality,
no empathy,
as if they were in a shooting arcade
only this time they were pointing
real weapons
and pulling the triggers
on other very young people,
some in their teens,
quietly sitting in terraces
while the crisp innocent night
was falling...
It was not a war
targeting the symbolic landmarks of power and wealth,
it was not taking place
inside or outside rich neighbourhoods,
and luxurious buildings,
Exclusive Hotels,
Michelin - 4 Star Restaurants
or crowded International Conference Centres.
No, not at all,
this crazy undeclared guerrilla warfare
was targeting
central,
young, Bohemian neighbourhoods
brimming with youngsters who'd scraped together the money
to buy a second drink.
This dirty
undeclared war,
fatal and vicious,
with no symbolic targets,
no symbolic victims
has changed our lives forever.
Time stopped then.
I live on rue Bichat
and I happened to be visiting the rich Concorde area,
leaving the Grand Palais
where Paris Photo Exhibition
was closing its doors for the evening.
I was safe because I was happened to be among the rich.
Nobody was attacking them.
Poor young people were killing other poor young people,
killers and victims alike,
forming a unity.
Does it make any sense?
No, it does not.
It still doesn't.
That's the real terror inside every terrorist act.
It does not make sense
for the killer
to be the doppelganger
of the victim.
This is what stopped time in its tracks,
and makes me uneasy,
profoundly upset
with our sick society
and its politics,
its media
its experts.
We don't really have a grip on the situation.
What happens defies all logic,
so we stuff it with theories
and expert nothings
and empty promises
and infinite political goodwill
and declarations of faith
about life and happiness and courage.
Whatever.
Thought is an industry
and the Trump clones
of professional thinking
and fear mongering
are curiously silent
behind the deafening fury
of their empty conventional words.
Unless we try to understand what caused
this sacrificial and manipulated homicide-suicide
of our young ones,
this double murder
of teenagers against teenagers,
both victims of our times,
killers and victims,
Westerners and Easterners,
side by side;
All killed by us
our society
our culture
our indifference to truth
and understanding,
compassion,
commitment,
and protection of Youth;
Unless we stand up and denounce things,
thus shielding the innocent and ill-prepared,
our own children;
Unless we behave like caring
and responsible adults,
by building a ladder
to climb out of this abysmal cultural rift
based on selfishness, career obsession, mental and emotional
laziness
and indifference to the fate of others, younger and
weaker than us,
Well,
AND
Unless we collectively pull together as a society
by cherishing our collective creative treasures and discoveries
about what is good and real and generous in us,
AND,
Encore,
Unless we start a new way of thinking,
caring, sharing and acting,
where each one of us counts
because s/he offers a unique perspective on truth and love,
AND
Unless we weave all those tiny,
fragmented patches
of individual love and discovery
into a giant collective patchwork
and hang it up for all to see
and admire at a distance,
standing all together,
united-
looking at the new pattern emerging,
this whole new shape
magically transforming the fragments
of our separate and unique individual existence
into one coherent and mysterious,
and complex whole
made possible and visible
only because each one of us
actively contributed his or hers own precious and unique
individual fragment...
NOW,
Unless we collectively give birth to this as yet unknown element
urging to pull to the surface
this huge complex figurative patchwork
lurking underneath
unwanted and unexpressed,
pull it up in its shining truth
and at last start learning
how to decipher it, together...
Unless we throw ourselves
into unchartered mental territories...
We shall never form
and we shall never discern
from afar
thousands of broken fragments coming together,
slowly becoming
a clear, well defined path for all of us to follow,
including the young in our mist.
Condensed truth
Condensed love
Condensed humanity
The only possible shared triad,
EMBODIMENT OF HOPE.
