lacking words

i don't seem to be able to find many words about the events in paris on friday evening. the horror seems at once too great and too commonplace to articulate. we grow numb from the frequency of these things, from them happening in the places where we work or play or go to school or go to relax and have fun. we could easily end up afraid to leave our homes. doors locked, minds closed, alone only with those we love and that which we know, afraid to let anything and anyone new in, lest they harm us. i don't think such a world would be that much fun. and i hope it doesn't come to that. so, we do what we can - symbolic gestures, like changing our profile picture in solidarity with those who lost their lives - to say that we stand with paris, feel for them, our hearts bleeding for them. i'm not sure if it means that much and i only left mine for a little while. it suddenly felt disingenuous. i've only ever been at the airport in paris and frankly, it's not my favorite place - so what business do i have standing in solidarity? i can't even really imagine how those people felt - how frightened they were, how panicked, how horrible it must have been. on some level, i just can't relate. i feel a bit numb about it. but, i hope that people will defiantly return to the cafés and concert halls and streets and football stadiums - that they will go about their lives, that they will not live in fear, because living in fear means those terrorists have won. hmm, maybe it's time to finally go see paris.

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and on a happier and better-smelling note - a story of the last perfumer in belgrade.

makes me want to go to belgrade.

with thanks to bill for sending me the link.

in the same boat

still trying to absorb what happened last evening in copenhagen and like with the charlie hebdo events a few weeks ago, i find it too easy that the supposed perpetrator is killed before making him explain. now we will assign whatever meaning we wish to it - fear, terror, suspicion - and it will only continue in the long run. us against them will solidify rather than dissolving.

i have this notion that instead of being afraid, we need to hold more events where we discuss free speech, we need to have so many of them that no disgruntled, disenfranchised person with skewed ideas can possibly attack them all. we need to overwhelm them with the freedom of our speech.

shaken.

someone with murderous intentions has attacked a free speech event in copenhagen which featured a swedish cartoonist who published islam-critical cartoons back in 2007. it's happening again. probably (tho' we don't really know that for sure, since photos of the perpetrator are very sketchy at best, as are descriptions). one of the people in denmark who means the most to me is a cartoonist. he wasn't involved in the jyllands posten drawings back in 2005 (he works for a competing newspaper), but he is equally sharp in his editorial cartooning skills. and it shakes me to the core to think that i have to worry about his safety as he goes about his everyday life here in denmark. but it probably really has come to that after charlie hebdo and now this attack in copenhagen. is it really possible now that people will die for free speech and being clever and skeptical? and is it worth it? at this moment, even in the face of the uncertainty over what has really happened in copenhagen earlier today (and we don't really have a clear picture of it yet as i write this), that might very well be the case. keep your loved ones close and tell them that you love them.

windows of new york

in light of today's events in france (the shooting of the suspects), i have a need to look at things that feel beautiful and inspiring and aspirational instead of dwelling of the fear and the pain and the terror and yes, the disappointment that they don't have to answer for their actions. because some part of me wants answers - why did they do this? what possessed them? if we could just understand we could do something and these things would end, right? and no one would have to go around in fear. right?

oh well, just look at the pretty windows, will you?

a little assemblage of thoughts on the tragic events in paris

the tragic events in paris at charlie hebdo are on my mind, like they surely are for you as well. i'd frankly never heard of the magazine before, but my french is pretty weak, so it's no wonder. i have great affection for biting satire that forces you to think deeper and from what i've seen and read, they produce a newspaper in that vein. it is a horrible tragedy that they were slaughtered for doing so by people who didn't agree with their views and methods. it's so horrible that i think on some level i can't even really fathom it. it seems quite unreal, even in the face of graphic videos shot by bystanders. so it's taken me a few days to begin to collect my thoughts enough to write something about it. but i have been reading a lot of articles about it in a variety of places, from the nytimes to the guardian to danish newspapers to a friend's blog. that blog is probably the best, most sensible piece i've read.

i find it exceptionally disheartening what the tragedy seems to have done to people. i see it in my facebook feed, but i'm also reading it in the various opinion pieces online. it's not only the blood and gore of it, but how it has turned on a hatred of an entire religion, based on the actions of a few fanatics. my facebook feed is full of people calling for closing denmark's borders and sending home syrian refugees, calls to withdraw all resources from programs which help people in need who happen to be muslim. there is a mass reaction that is very black & white, very unnuanced and which, in my view, contains as much hate as those men with the guns must have felt on wednesday. it's a similar kind of reactionary fanaticism.  and it's tinged with more than a little racism and xenophobia. and to me, it means that the terrorists have won beyond their wildest imagination. if they can make us fear and hate at the same level as they do, they have reduced us.

i am heartened to see pockets of rationality and sense here and there. twitter is our barometer these days and like in australia, where a supportive hashtag surfaced, saying #illridewithyou, after the lunatic held all those hostages in the lindt café, there seems to be a groundswell of folks rallying around the policeman they so brutally shot, saying #jesuisahmed, rather than #jusuischarlie, which carries with it a more radical connotation.

it is hard to see what good can possibly come of this, but i do hope that we are able to take up a discussion which allows us to discuss the nuances and actually begin to address the problems that underlie these things...like the imbalance of resources in this world, the imperialist notions of those in the west, so sure of our own superiority, like getting education to women and the young populations of the muslim countries, so that they can see that they have options other than violence. rather than saying we need to send all of the foreigners home, maybe we should make them more welcome around here. it's much harder for people to hate and kill when they are your friends.