Thursday, March 21, 2024 I awoke at six o’clock yesterday morning. Like I always do. E was still asleep in bed next to me. I showered and got dressed, trying not to wake her, then went out into the living room to get a few hours of writing done before work. I was only moderately productive.
That last paragraph & line was perfect. The guilt and grief for all atrocities that go on in the world are hard to come to terms when it’s just luck that means we are safe and they are not.
I read the entire book of Deaf Republic just after it came out - the poem is equally interesting in context, because the book is a narrative collection about a community living in the wake and midst of great violence. But I also think of Wislawa Symborska's The End and the Beginning - that peace and happiness in the midst of violence (elsewhere) is always part of the human condition, that there is always violence near and far you can choose to attend to, or not, in the midst of your own happiness. Where and when do we notice violence? What cameras, whose words, draw it to our attention? How are we listening for it? How do we let our own happiness, when we have if, be our water and our iron that allows us to be strong, and not look away, and question how our own participation in oppression and liberation (hopefully more of one than the other) will shape the rest of our lives?
(thank you for so many compelling pieces of writing that seem to always inspire me to write very long comments!)
What is it about Israel Palestine that tugs at your heart strings in such a way Pranay? I don't see any such heart wrenching writing from you concerning the Haitians, Sudanese, Rohingya, Uighurs, Hazaras, etc. Your life and billions of others' continue unaffected regardless of all these situations. Forgive me Pranay, however this piece comes off to me as rather self-serving, "look at me wanting to suffer like those in Gaza but sigh...I must live in my cozy apartment and play scrabble" This is all in good faith by the way, I await your response.
That last paragraph & line was perfect. The guilt and grief for all atrocities that go on in the world are hard to come to terms when it’s just luck that means we are safe and they are not.
Thank you so much for this piece.
I read the entire book of Deaf Republic just after it came out - the poem is equally interesting in context, because the book is a narrative collection about a community living in the wake and midst of great violence. But I also think of Wislawa Symborska's The End and the Beginning - that peace and happiness in the midst of violence (elsewhere) is always part of the human condition, that there is always violence near and far you can choose to attend to, or not, in the midst of your own happiness. Where and when do we notice violence? What cameras, whose words, draw it to our attention? How are we listening for it? How do we let our own happiness, when we have if, be our water and our iron that allows us to be strong, and not look away, and question how our own participation in oppression and liberation (hopefully more of one than the other) will shape the rest of our lives?
(thank you for so many compelling pieces of writing that seem to always inspire me to write very long comments!)
Thank you. This was beautiful and devastating.
What is it about Israel Palestine that tugs at your heart strings in such a way Pranay? I don't see any such heart wrenching writing from you concerning the Haitians, Sudanese, Rohingya, Uighurs, Hazaras, etc. Your life and billions of others' continue unaffected regardless of all these situations. Forgive me Pranay, however this piece comes off to me as rather self-serving, "look at me wanting to suffer like those in Gaza but sigh...I must live in my cozy apartment and play scrabble" This is all in good faith by the way, I await your response.