“History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” – Mark Twain.
I am a citizen of this world. I reject the world of paper cutters, dashed lines drawn by well dressed men on maps laid across spacious tables.
Let me explain.
This man, I love, admire, adore. Yet, he was hated and despised. A wanted man across all “civilized” nations. Persecuted as a war criminal. Labeled and called a “terrorist” long before the word was in vogue. He needs no introduction.
This weekend, we saw a 2nd Warsaw Ghetto uprising. And now we’ll see a second version of the SS retribution and ethnic cleansing.
Like the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, it came after years where justice was absent. Humiliation, death, deportation, jailing, starvation were the norm. And like the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, those sparcely armed, fighting to liberate the ghetto, knew there wasn’t any chance in hell of it but to quote the scholar Martin Gilbert (who wrote the book on the Holocaust),
Most of the Jewish fighters did not view their actions as an effective measure by which to save themselves, but rather as a battle for the honour of the Jewish people, and a protest against the world's silence.
I think as I write this of Justin Trudeau and the rest of the Canadian parliament, inviting an SS man into the seat of government and celebrating his life. It is for me, not a surprise. A symbol of the stupid people that rule our world, a symbol of our failure to educate, a failure to raise citizens that know of history and her switchbacks and nuances. A failure to create a society of people intelligent enough to see the backdrop upon which actions take place, instead of just skimming the surface and making history into their blowhard flag waving, patriotic, scoundrel celebration. We are ruled by scoundrels and criminals, truly, I kid you not. Run for the hills or you are next or at least, learn not to stand out.
I think as I write this of Bukowski’s words I read on the shitter this morning - The Crunch. Listen to Bukowski read it here. It’s a theme that runs through so much of his writing and spirit - people are not good to each other. He had a good sniffer and understands the depravity, the violence, the cruelty people dress in, under their Sunday best clothes.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
I think as I write this of a poet I wish more people read (even in what is lost in translation - there is still the marrow therein) - Mahmoud Darwish. A poor Palestinian poet who spent much of his life in exile and even in death, could not return to his home town, razed to the grounds by the IDF, as it was. He was not even given that dignity. Even in death, the Palestinians are shamed.
He’ll never win the Nobel Prize. Or if so, long, long down the road when the scoundrels try to rewrite history and blind us from seeing whose side they were on and what they stood for - tea and crumpets and poppycock. Just like they did with Nelson Mandela.
Darwish’s writing is a voice about loss, the road of no justice, the Palestinian people walk. Read some more - especially The Cypress Broke. I’ll leave you with his bitter sweet words while the trumpets blare and the buildings crumpled and THEIR justice is done.
Again, I repeat. I am a citizen of the world. Bury me standing. I won’t give them mutherwhores the satisfaction of burying me, any other way.
If I Were Another - Mahmoud Darwish
If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself ... and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!
If I were another I would have belonged to the road,
neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar
and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity. I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.
If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!
If I were another on the road, I would have said
to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say. Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I ... and another!