EMBODIMENT OF HOPE

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.