Impotence, slugs and holding the inner flame
Unpublished rant(s) - now published [instead of Re-writing the future 2]
And so, what do we do1?
We cry our eyes out. We rip our clothes and pull out our hair. We scroll endlessly and weep at pictures of dead children. We scroll. We send letters and make calls. We boycott. We turn our grief into a work of art; we sell it and donate the proceeds to aid. Does it ever get there?
We pray and wait. Nothing. We curse and wait. Nothing. There is no listener. We turn to something else.
We plant a garden. It’s too wet this year. A slug plague wipes all new growth. We remove the slimy creatures and bring them far away. Compassionate. Creatures of god … too many because we disturbed the balance in the first place. We surround our plants with broken egg shells. The rain pours hard and scatters the barriers. The slugs eat all. We place beer traps, at least they’d die happy. Forgive us. We cringe cleaning it up. Too nasty. Still too many slugs, we can hardly walk without stepping on one. They crawl up the windows of our house. We learn to dislike them. We collect them in buckets of salt water. Quick death. It stinks. Forgive us. We pour salt on them. They leave snot trails to remind of the crime. Forgive us. We break them in half with a shovel for the birds to eat - that’s the most humane. They keep coming. We learn to hate them. It’s either us or them! We feel like shit. This is how war is justified. We stop gardening. We turn to something else.
We cook. We sit to eat but food turns to ash in our mouths. We try to be grateful for what we have. We could have been there eating mud. So, we post comments for our friends to read and applaud. Buy a necklace, support the cause. Thank you for subscribing.
End the war. Cease fire now. Enough is enough. Never again. Not in our name. Not our tax money… Preaching to the choir, but at least still trying…
Lord have mercy on the angel of death- he has his hands full.
We try to live, to work, to go out and see friends. But we are not there. We are not here. We are no where. Is this the point of all of this. To make us lose hope. To make us succumb to the fact that we can do nothing. That we are nothing. Insignificant. Impotent.
Slugs are hermaphrodites.
My lunch threatens to present itself on my dinner plate. What am I complaining about? I walked the dog earlier today. I heard the birds singing; they are not concerned with what’s happening on the other side of the world - neither are my neighbours. People are getting face-lifts, others are cheering a football match. I am standing in my audio booth unable to open my mouth to say a word - what difference does anything make. Podcast removed for ‘containing terrorist content.’ Held up at passport control. Blocked. Silenced.
We become numb. We turn another page and no longer see the bloody cover.
Blank.
Then 3 AM starts waking us up every day. Get up, whispers Rumi, don’t go back to sleep. But we turn a deaf ear. Neither getting up nor sleeping. Tossing and turning. The mind floods with insignificant worries, until we get up - far too late and angry. Three am wakes us up again and again and again. Three Four Five. Three. Get up, whispers Rumi, a little harder this time. We eventually do. And as the first light breaks through the darkness, it sparks a tiny flame that somehow succeeds in igniting the pile of wood that we thought was too wet with tears to ever combust … and a small fire is born … and a dream is rekindled.
One day we will see each other’s humanity and weep in each other’s arms.
Forgive me. I forgive you. Forgive them. Forgive us.
إن الله غفور رحيم:
God is forgiving and compassionate
“It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.” Marie-Louise von Franz (Jungian psychologist & scholar)
I return to this entry - while wrestling with the second part to my previous publication [Re-writing the future 2] having fallen into the rabbit hole of editing and re-editing (which I promised myself not to do) and trying to fight off depression. Comparing ideologies and extracting false ties. From my father’s wisdom to Islamic lore to Biblical roots and the end of times. Christian Zionists, Evangelicals, Messianic Jews … what’s the difference? Who am I to be talking. Afraid of making mistakes, of saying the wrong things, of falling into the trap of demonising my ‘own’ people or ‘the other.’ Worried about readers unsubscribing. Bridges I’ve burnt over and over again. Maybe I should just accept it. Let the bridges burn. I know how to swim. And if I drown, then maybe a whale will swallow me whole, or a mermaid will welcome me to the afterworld … maybe I’ll become foam. There is no end. [And wasn’t the whole point of starting this substack to help me write the book and finish it. The book - now on the back-burner for ten days. Re-shuffle the deck of cards - I pull out one, it says ‘be silent.’ But I am no angel and I have free-will. A jinn, I do not listen and press send. Thank you for reading. Keep the flame alive, please.