It’s been almost a year since I last posted. What can I say? I have been busy working on my novel. Also, I am incredibly inconsistent.
Plus, war.
I have not, thus far, been able to find the words to express how I feel about the Genocide, sorry, I mean ‘conflict’ in Gaza. Which is ironic given I am meant to be a writer.
I am not a spokesperson. Or an expert. Or anyone, really. The best I can come up with, after spending the better part of 2024 staring at a screen shouting, is a worthless bunch of expletives I would like to ‘insert here’ on the futility, tragedy and mindlessness of c**ting old men currently running the world. I don’t mean it as a sexist remark. Just a fact, really.
And yet the world, in spite of it all, keeps on turning. It continues to spin on its axis. Which is incredible in itself. That it continues with the human experience when it seems as though there is no humanity left.
Then again, this is nothing new, is it? Bombs dropping is nothing new. Children dying is nothing new. C**ting old men running the world is nothing new. Maybe it was naive of me to think history would inform us, instruct us or ever do anything other than repeat itself. Maybe, like all those who came before us, it is just our turn to awaken from our heavy slumber.
Then there’s the helplessness. The ‘who am I? The what can I do?’ of it all. And people (the internet) say all we can do is bear witness. As if bearing witness is somehow action. All it does is turn this catastrophe into some kind of horror film, a twisted circus of a reality TV show. We have now become the type of people who consume content about the burning, charred bodies of babies followed by fashion and celebrity followed by avocado-on-toast.
I don’t have the words to describe how I feel about that either. Other than: I feel despair. Other than: I feel guilt. I am complicit, after all, am I not? In my bearing witness. In my heavy slumber.
So yeah, these are just some of the things I have been asking myself over the last eight months. The questions just hang in the air, with no answers. Sorry.
But they do say the job of the writer is to ask questions, not offer solutions. Hopefully I am here to stay for a while and we can hang out some more, pondering life’s inane questions together…
Thank you, just thank you