Understanding Horror

Guernica, Pablo Picasso

I’ve tried to understand this war, and failed.

It’s made me feel rather stupid – this inability to wrap my head around 30 years of horror, why it all started and who is to blame. Everyone seems to talk about it with such ease – like it’s the simplest thing to understand. As if it’s effortless to take one particular view and stick to it. I listen to the sophisticated talk of politicians, of family, of friends and marvel at the sureness of their convictions with frustrated envy.

It could be my limited understanding of politics and history that’s to blame. I have tried to remedy this over the past year or so, and despite accusations to the contrary, I hope I am making some headway. The more I learn, though, the more that yawning chasm of untapped knowledge stretches. I wonder if I will ever conquer it. And if I do, I wonder what that will mean.

Because, when you think about it, is there any such thing as understandingthe war? Is there any way to rationalize what happened? Every gun shot, every limb torn away, every life snuffed out, every radicalized mind, every spirit shattered – how can we justify those things? How can we say, “it had to happen”? How can we blame it on a few people, sit back and feel better about ourselves?

Peace.

Written some time this year…

I stand out on a pier which stretches out from the garden of a house I will probably never return to and look out onto a lake.

The rains have begun – it poured in fits and starts the entire trip here, like a sputtering shower. Above me, the clouds keep their tears at bay for now but they are flushed and angry and I know there will be a downpour soon. Not the best weather for the beach, but for some reason, I prefer it this way.

The lake laps up between the concrete slats of the pier, licking my sandy toes and inviting me in. It is hot, humid and I long to slip into the inky water and wash off the sweat of the day, but I don’t. The lake has always made me nervous. I feel as if it is hiding secrets from me that it will never tell. Still, it flirts and I flirt back, bending down to graze its surface with my fingers. The water heaves underneath my touch, responding.

That day, that day I lay down beside myself…

Some songs just sing your soul.

That Day (A Moment of Clarity)

That day, that day
What a mess what a marvel
I walked into that cloud again
And I lost myself
And I’m sad, sad, sad
Small, alone, scared
Craving purity
A fragile mind and a gentle spirit

That day, that day,
What a marvelous mess
This is all that I can do
I’m dying to be me
Sad, scared, small, alone, beautiful
It’s supposed to be like this
I accept everything
It’s supposed to be like this

The Proposal

…to my best friend, who told me she would marry me if we were both single at 60.

The Proposal

When we’re 60 and wrinkly and funny and old,
We’ll get married – and how everybody will scold!
We’ll be the scandal of Colombo (or should we move out of town?)
There’ll be finger-pointing in public but we’ll just laugh them down.
Our house will be mad – can you imagine the mess
Of art and trinkets and shoes and dress?
We’ll have some cactus in the garden – there can be no doubt.
Music will play all the time and the neighbours will shout.
Dylan, Dave Matthews, Cocorosie, Pink Floyd
Anyone with bad taste we’ll politely avoid.
There’ll be mirrors all over, each with a different frame,
It’ll be crazy, it’ll be cluttered but it’ll never be lame.
We’ll have a cupboard especially for clothes that are godey
When we’re sad we’ll dress up and laugh our blues away.
There’ll be sunshine and music and laughter and noise
And – if we have a pool – maybe even a porpoise.
The porpoise would dance and play underwater,
We’ll have hundreds of dogs, no need of son and daughter.
You’ll paint, I’ll sing, we’ll cook and clean
But it’ll never be a chore; there’s too much fun in between.
With us a broom will never just be a broom
But an excuse to sing “Big Mistake” while we’re sweeping our room.
Flowers will bloom on all our window sills,
We’ll save up all our money in funny little tills.
We’ll pick some of those flowers and wear them in our hair,
We’ll spend some of that money on scarves to wear.
We’ll have friends around us all the time.
We’ll have spaghetti carbonara and tequila with lime.
At this rate, my darling, I fear I am sold -
I cannot WAIT to be 60 and wrinkly and old.

The Cypress Cottage, by shortcherryberry

A Presentation: The Lure of the Blogosphere

NOTE: This was a presentation I gave at the PANOS-hosted workshop for female journalists, under the theme “Skills Building in New and Alternative Media” on the 3rd of October 2009.

THE LURE OF THE BLOGOSPHERE: Blogging as a journalist, woman and individual in Sri Lanka.

I’m supposed to speak to you on blogging and the blogosphere – something I am fairly new to myself, but have quickly got quite addicted to!

MY STORY: Beginnings

I started blogging last year, around October, and it was for the most mundane of reasons – a bad break up. I felt I needed a release, I had been reading blogs for a while and decided that then was a bad a time as any to start writing. And I did – I wrote and wrote and wrote. It was all very personal at first but then, as the sting of the break up faded, I started to write about other things.

I have always loved writing. I have always felt that I sounded better on print than I did in real life! Words have come easily to me from the time I was a child: I would write stories endlessly – my essays in school were 20 odd pages long while the average kid wrote about half a page. I’ve kept a journal since I was 11 and still write in it, although admittedly, not as often.

Still, a blog is a whole different ball game. There are so many dimensions to it: There’s the anonymity issue, that weird dynamic between being private but public at the same time, and then there’s content. A blog can be about literally anything, so the possibilities are endless.

From my own experience, and judging from the experience of some others I know, starting a blog is always the hardest part of the process. I think people tend to put too much thought into it – they think it needs to have a set structure, that they need to write in it all the time and they don’t know if they have anything to say that could be interesting to other people. These were certainly my own concerns as well. I first thought of blogging when I was at University. I remember writing, re-writing and discarding draft after draft of what would be my very first blog post. And in the end, the pressure was too much and I couldn’t bring myself to get started at the time. It was only when the necessity to put my thoughts and feelings out there trumped all my preconceived notions about blogging, that it came to me easily.

Grace

Human Being Four, by feunS

Mud. All over her shoes, dripping off the edges of her trousers. Grace grimaces and kicks her feet, sending her sodden shoes rolling sluggishly away from her. Tom watches her entry, annoyed already. “You’re leaving dirt everywhere” he remarks. “Bite me” she mutters darkly and stomps her way past him to their room, shutting the door pointedly. Once inside, she pulls of her jeans and sits down on the edge of her bed. She cries for a minute, as she always does, and regains her composure. Time for a bath.

With difficulty she gets up again – being mobile is getting tougher now. The baby seems to be growing a foot every day. She wouldn’t be surprised if she gave birth to a giant in a few months with the way they were going. She was heavy, all the time. It was taking all her strength to drag her own weight around each day. She steps into the shower and relaxes a little with the steaming heat. As she squints through the flood of water against her face, she wishes she could stay here forever. Not have to get out. Not have to sit through a bland dinner. Not have to have another fight with Tom. And they would have a fight. They fought about everything. If they didn’t fight they just sat there, bitter and silent. Fighting was almost an improvement to that silence.

Love is…

…this song.

It makes me happy and hopeful. And in the end, what more could you want out of love?

Thanks to RD for the open tag.

love, love, love… by emaraldiris

Hear no evil. See no evil.

*Inspired by Electra’s What happened in Sri Lanka Today

I’m telling the truth, by obtusellama

My younger son watches the news. He’s only 7 but he likes to sit there, drinking in information he can barely understand. I watch him more than I watch the screen, seeing the flickering images catch in his wide, curious eyes. Cataclysmic events unfold in front of him and he stares, mouth slightly ajar, his food untouched on the plate that is perched on his lap.

I nudge him gently. “Eat your food” I chastise and he robotically takes a mouthful, forgetting again as soon as it is swallowed.

My older daughter doesn’t watch the news at all. Instead she slouches in her seat, long legs crossed, hands resting on her lap. The phone which lies within perfectly manicured nails never stops beeping, irritating me with these constant reminders of its presence. A persisting stream of text messages and calls dominate my daughter’s life, leaving room for nothing else. Whenever I teasingly comment on this she gives me that classically teenage roll of the eyes and muttered “Whatever” and goes back to her tiny phone-screen world.

Tonight she is more preoccupied than ever, playing distractedly with her hair in between texts. When the phone beeps, heralding a new message, she fairly lunges forward, texting feverishly. I wonder what’s happening in her life, what she isn’t telling me. Then I guiltily wonder if I’m better off not knowing.

“You should know what’s happening around the world, you know” I say, trying to distract her a little. She glowers at me silently but makes a point to stare with glassy eyes at the screen. I know her thoughts are elsewhere. She knows I know.

My little one gasps, taking my attention back to the TV. As the news anchor dispassionately doles out the bad news, I shake my head, disappointed but unsurprised. Another journalist, incarcerated. Guilty, says the woman on screen. I look at the man’s tired smile seconds before he is pushed into the prison vehicle and think to myself that he doesn’t look like a criminal. I chide myself for being sentimental in this age of cold objectivity. The door of the prison vehicle on screen slams and my son jumps, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling. His forehead is wrinkled with effort to understand what he was hearing and seeing onscreen.

A Review: Kumbi Kathawa

The parameters of a good dance

Review of Kumbi Kathawa – performed by Chitrasena Kalayathanaya

I’ve always loved dancing. I’ve spent whole afternoons as a kid running around the garden in a leotard, hoping this exercise would magically turn me into a ballerina. I’ve grown up watching ballets both on stages around the world and on my parents’ beat up VCR. Dance movies from ‘The Dancing Princesses’ to ‘Dirty Dancing’ to ‘Step Up’ have kept me enthralled and not just a little green with envy.

Because, when you think about it, what’s not to love about dancing? The bodies are lithe and beautiful but muscles pulse and flex beneath smooth skin. The movements are so graceful but also so steady and strong. The expressions speak volumes but no words are uttered.

Admittedly I’m no expert when it comes to dance, least of all Kandyan dancing.  But I am a firm believer that one of the most important functions of any art is to provoke an immediate reaction. So I don’t need to analyse every step to figure out if it’s a good dance or not. My measures are a little different; a little more visceral. I know it’s a good dance when my own body twists discreetly in my seat, in an involuntary echo of what’s happening onstage. I know it’s a good dance when I am almost afraid to blink for fear of missing a single movement, a single loaded glance. I know it’s a good dance when I am too wrapped up in the action to even clap when the stage vanishes into inky darkness. (In fact, I was only shaken out of my reverie when I heard a little voice behind me indignantly say “Ammi mata mukuth penne ne” (Mum, I can’t see anything!). I had to laugh.)

Churches

Praying to the light, by Silvie Tepes

Sunday, 23 August 2009

Church today, after a long, long time. After the past tumultuous few months, I honestly didn’t know how I would feel to walk in there again but sitting on the well-worn pews, flanked by my mother and grandmother, I suddenly felt calm and happy. There we were, 3 generations of mother and daughter, sitting together but alone with our own thoughts and it all suddenly just made me feel at home.

Religion was never something I spent a lot of time thinking about – not because I didn’t think it mattered, but because it was something that was simple to me: I believed. That was it, that was enough. I didn’t have a philosophy about it, I certainly didn’t pray endlessly but I didn’t feel bad for it either.

I think of religion as a quiet, private thing, which is why I find the more charismatic kind of church-going experience very disconcerting, although I daresay it works for some, and that’s ok. It just doesn’t feel right to me personally. I think that’s why I related to TMS’s post about TV evangelists. I don’t enjoy being preached at, but I like the idea of being guided.