Category / words of the month

by jsetc

Imagine

It’s been a while between posts. I’m almost ready to share what’s been happening in my head lately but until then this old piece will have to do.  It was John Lennon’s birthday yesterday. Before the date fades again for another year I decided to drag this old piece out, which was inspired by his memory. It was written so long ago, in another country and what feels like another lifetime ago. Re-reading it now, it’s still relevant. Sadly, not much has changed. So happy birthday John Lennon, 74 year-old that you would have been had our world not have been so fucked up. Let’s be reminded – today, tomorrow and again the next day –  to try and stop fucking things up any more than they have already been. Imagine away people x

I only managed to see about 15 minutes of the 11th memorial for Yitzhak Rabin’s murder. I had confused the starting time with the time of Aviv Geffen’s appearance…so made it just in time to watch him sing the same song he sang 11 years ago, minutes before Rabin’s death. The words came on as I made my way through the crowds. This year, the Clintons weren’t invited to speak. Neither were any politicians. They could come to participate, but not to take advantage of the crowd in order to spit meaningless promises at their audience, whose patience and energy were dwindling. As I moved towards the front of the stage I noticed the people around me. Last year, at the 10th anniversary of Rabin’s death, the city square was packed with 250,000 bodies; international journalists, people of all ages, cameras, banners, balloons, candles…this year it was as if only the real stayers came; only the ones who really meant it, with or without Bill Clinton’s speech. This year there was a lot more space to move around, and a chance to really see the faces of the people. As Aviv Geffen left the stage and a young girl came on to sing the national anthem, I realized that I had missed David Grossman’s keynote address. He is a well known left wing author, whose son was killed in Lebanon the day before the cease-fire… I realized I’d almost missed the most intense dose of peace and love available in this country. The presence of the people around me (singing the anthem) has been growing thinner and thinner with every year that passes. It is so hard to talk about peace here, to still believe that it may happen one day. But thank goodness for these people who still manage to find a way to believe. I looked around and understood that the future of this country depends on them; nothing else would make a bigger difference. The memorial ended. People kept standing. No one wanted to leave. The song that Rabin himself had sung at the peace concert 11 years ago came on in the background – Song of Peace. Everyone seemed to be in a sort of daze. They slowly started dispersing, miming the words of the song to themselves, as if in some weird kind of dream state. Then groups of people began moving faster and dancing to the music. It was over, for another year. Lots of people kept standing there, staring at the crowds, not wanting to go anywhere. And then there was what Alanis Morrisette may have described as an ironic moment (but I would just call it a strange coincidence)…Imagine by John Lennon came on. People quickly swapped the words they were mouthing for the words to Imagine. I was still taking it all in in the background. Suddenly, the CD started jumping. The words became muffled and twisted and broken. Then, just like that, the song died…just stopped!!! I burst out laughing, along with a woman who was standing next to me. She read my mind and said “It’s too hard to even imagine it anymore huh?” On that note I turned around and started walking home. I’d caught a glimpse of the peaceful people in this country at least. I’d get home to see how many people in Gaza had been killed over the weekend. I’d have to watch the once centrist government slowly but surely turning right wing again. I’d have to keep wandering what would happen next for the rest of the year…but I would have in my memory all those people who turned up in the cold and the rain to give peace a chance once again. And if David Grossman, who had lost his son to war, could still stand up there and plead for it…maybe, maybe – I thought – others could be convinced to do it too.

(2006)

by jsetc

My comfort zone

My comfort zone

 the national geographic shot

Apparently I look twenty six and Mauritian. Those who know me would giggle kindly at this description. The passenger on the train this morning who relayed it to me thought he was being sweet, I guess. I just want to get home. Disinterested in his small talk, my quiet demeanour hopefully came off as shyness. It is too early in the morning, I am stuck without a car unexpectedly and I need to start my day. That’s all. I do not want to talk about the great weather, or the up-coming football season or the traffic. I need to get from A to B and this train ride was not in my plan. There’s something about the phrase public transport that either does it for you or doesn’t. When it’s brought up in conversation the debate that follows has the potential to leak into all sorts of political and social realms. Almost always though it comes with stories of excruciating experiences of having to deal with other humans who’ve inadvertently stepped into your comfort zone. On a different day I would have welcomed the chance to speak aimlessly about nothing for a while to someone I didn’t know and didn’t have to worry about. Today the fact that I don’t has left me with a feeling that lines my insides with guilty frustration. 

A few years ago I took a  photo I affectionately used to call the National Geographic shot. Look what I’ve captured, I proudly thought to myself. I even thought I’d seen the image before somewhere; the two women seemed to epitomise my expectations of beautiful and exotic. Back then my eyes skimmed past the reality but years later, as I sit here with my time on this train,  I find the vision back in my thoughts. They were two women without space to breath. Two women who could not avoid the smell of each other if they wanted to. Two women whose faces pressed together as the weight of the people behind them pushed them so close that they could almost taste each other. Two women who were not friends. Two women who had no room for small talk. One woman, with her hair brushed and pulled back neatly and some makeup applied to her face; her finger sporting a shiny ring  – was off to work. The other whose exhausted face showed the lines of her harsh life, was off to somewhere. The window next to them was open not only to let the air in; as the women hung out of it they were so thankful for the extra inch of space it ever so slightly provided them. This would be the only bus for hours. Miss it and they would be late… If time is what mattered to them.

Recently I have begun considering space; the fuss we make about it, how much we take it for granted, how we either attract or repel others towards our own personal invisible circle, which we shrink or expand accordingly. My thoughts drift back to that bus stop in Northern India. If I close my eyes I can see all the other things that were on the bus; chickens, goats, boxes, cages, bags – all forced to find a space between the people. I remember that when I tried to board the bus myself I was politely told that this transport was only for locals, not suitable for foreigners. My bus would be coming soon.

It makes me wonder why I was not allowed on the bus. Was it because I wouldn’t be able to cope with the lack of personal space? Do we take space too seriously? Are we too precious about it being invaded? I take a more scrupulous look at the photo in my head and I feel a sense of closeness between the women; they will push up against each other and in doing so offer a support that I would not be able to ask of anyone on this entire train. It suddenly occurs to me – I am sitting here all alone. Comfortable in my invisible bubble of space.  Giving off vibes of ‘do not come closer’ and ‘do not initiate conversation with me because I don’t have time for you’ to anyone who glances in my direction.

As my heart-rate begins to increase with thoughts of my kids and partner waiting for me on the other end of my train journey; as lists of chores begin piling up in my head alongside work, school and everything else I am running late for, my reality hits me: I have my own stack of things to fit into spaces on my own bus. And here I am, standing in my comfort zone at the train stop. There is no one for me to push away from or push up against or reach out to and feel close enough to ask for help.

by jsetc

Crying in a different language

unnamed (3)

Today I woke up to some awful news that made me cry tears I didn’t know what to do with or where to put. Where do we put the emotion that erupts when life gets a bit too much to take? How do we wear them so as not to seem shallow or fake? When the world around us has gone crazy where can I put my tears cried for someone I knew such a long time ago?

The first time I realised that emotion was something I could never control was when I cried in a different language. The tears ran down my face and I wasn’t even sure why. The words that I could only grasp on the surface  had touched a place inside me that I immediately understood was a domain I could never completely comprehend even though it lived inside of me.

Something similar happened this morning. After being told of the passing of a person I was once friends with my body at first froze. Once the news sunk in the tears began to fall. I hadn’t seen or spoken to this person for so many years but all I could see was her shining smile, her big white teeth and her cheeky eyes. Although so much time had passed since we had last spoken she is someone who finds her way into my head more often than she will ever know. Just a few weeks ago I was cleaning out my cupboard and came across a shrunken brown Bonds t-shirt. I don’t remember why but it reminded me of Danya and so I kept it. Now it seems like such a strange thing to have happened. And now that will become my little piece of her. The t-shirt that conjures up memories of call centres, laughs and silly conversations.

I carried tears around with me all day today.  I carried them for the fact I hadn’t spoken to her in such a long time. I carried them for the fact I didn’t know she was suffering. I carried them for all the other lost connections my life has been a part of. I carried them for all the connections I might still lose for no particular reason other than we all have so much to be busy with we get lost in our own busyness and forget to take people with us on our journey. I carried them because even though we know that life is too short – so many people repeat that phrase so often – we still spend too much time worrying about the details that won’t matter.

So I decided to put my tears here on this page. There is nothing I can do for Danya any more. There is no way I can even say goodbye and tell her she was often in my thoughts. I can’t tell her that she’s one of those special people who walk into a life and leave a mark, because not everyone does. I can’t tell her how sorry I am. All I can do is write these words and remind myself of the beautiful people I have around me who I will try to hold on to and carry with me for as far as I can take them.  My tears today did make me feel uncomfortable at times. In any event they came from a real place inside me, where all the messiness piles up to be sorted. And although I can’t quite find a place for them yet, putting them here to breathe for a while feels really good.

by jsetc

What does Henry Kissinger have to do with it?

My grandmother went to school with Henry Kissinger. Although they never really shared anything beyond a class photo it is a fact that remains after many others have disappeared to that place where forgotten memories pile up like stock to be counted. Sometimes I wish I could find the pile so that I could discover other cool facts to share. Yet I know that what ends up in the pile desperately wants to be forgotten forever. There are some things we drag along with us though, despite their ugliness, their bitterness and the pain their memories cause. We pull them along in the hope they will keep us grounded in the place just in-between remembering and forgetting, so that we won’t be dragged down by them – or led astray without them. In reality though my life is so far removed from that of my grandmother’s that the fact she and Sir Kissinger shared a photo once upon a time seems ludicrous to me.

My grandmother also once came home with shit smothered in her hair. She was a beautiful lady and as a girl was tall, voluptuous and vivacious. She would light up eyes with her smiles and when she laughed her whole body would dance ever so elegantly. The only problem was she was Jewish in Germany. So when she came home one day covered in brown manure, smelling awful and crying with shame the fact that she was once at school with Henry Kissinger made no difference at all. This story is one of those memories I drag along with me, hoping it will keep me in that place that stops you from going numb from the senseless bullshit we seem to be smeared in ourselves every day that in turn keeps us from smelling what is actually happening around us.

Janine Schloss' Grandmother

If I look around me I can find lots of similar memories to drag around. I don’t need to look too far to find words like apartheid, Nazi, death camps, survivor, genocide and bloodshed in relation to my recent past. Yet every day, as the news of the world I live in uses words that are associated with my personal lexicon of horrific history; as killings and hate fill the screens of our news broadcasts to the point where it almost appears that the world is exaggerating I feel the numbness setting in and taking over. As the words become louder and seem to be drawing closer my stories about Henry Kissinger feel even more far-fetched than ever before.

This week while the world remembers the Holocaust I will remember my grandmother. She didn’t manage to meet Henry Kissinger again, although she did send him a letter once with a copy of her class photo attached. She did escape genocide though and just like him went on to live a relatively comfortable life in a world so far away from the one she was almost exhumed by. Yet as I remember her, I realise she was one of many and for each of her hundreds more didn’t get away in time. I sit here and think of her and no matter how hard I try I cannot envisage the place her home in Germany became as the Nazi regime set in. It is as far away to me and my comfortable life as Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and North Korea are.

This week people will flick through posts about Holocaust commemoration, just as they flick through updates about asylum seekers on our shores and war-torn places that all blend into one big mess they brush aside and put in a place they can refer to when it suits them to feel politically active. What are human rights? Shouldn’t that be a rhetorical question? On the one hand it seems so crazy to think that they need to be contested at all. On the other hand, as I put pieces of bits of war, bloodshed, racism, senseless killings and thoughtless hate-crimes together with the memory of my grandmother and the fate she was saved from the recent past suddenly morphs into the present and human rights sound like something the lucky few stumble upon.

Yet still this week will pass and nothing will have changed. I will carry on as you will. You might keep in your memory an interesting fact about my grandmother and Henry Kissinger but the world will go on and people will get away with murder. Women will be raped. Children will be tortured. Communities will be excluded. Soldiers will lose their lives. Borders will be crossed in the dead of night offering a glimpse of hope and we will carry on sighing together because the life we take for granted has so many of its own issues and problems that we so flippantly forget how lucky we are. And as hard as I try to actually see Henry Kissinger himself; to see the little boy who escaped Nazi Germany and became state secretary standing in front of me –I cannot. Until I am literally knocked over with a real-life pot I will continue to inhale the apathy drug that puts so many of us to sleep comfortably and enables us to live relatively unaccountably.

When I was much younger I dealt with the harsh realities of war that I learnt about in textbooks with the naïve notion that they occurred in some faraway time when people were monsters intermittently and for a lapse in time didn’t care about each other. That couldn’t happen now, I’d tell my much younger self; people couldn’t possibly let that happen now. And now, years later, as I read headlines of ‘never again’ and ‘lest we forget’, my naivety shines with obviousness. How did World War II happen? Did people get away with genocide simply because it wasn’t televised? What about when it was? What about Bosnia and Herzegovina? What about Rwanda? What about Sudan? What about Nigerian school girls getting kidnapped by the hundreds and used as sex slaves? This is just a brief list of the things we know about – what about the things we don’t know? Would it make a difference? Would you let it happen? What could you do to stop it?

Henry Kissinger, my grandmother and a long line of others were simply lucky. Luck is what saves some and drowns others; it is what feeds babies and lets others starve to death. I have seen how genocide is allowed to happen. It happens just as easily as we switch channels and switch off screens. How do we get away with simply saying ‘oh that’s terrible’ and ‘how can we let this happen?’ How do we walk past indifference in our own backyards and not get knocked over the head by its relevance? We wake up with this drive in our core to change the world and then we go to sleep drunk on the comfort of our own immediate surroundings. We say we care just as quickly as we order another latte and get on with life. We use the same signature to sign a petition as we do to sign a credit card receipt. We say we care. We say we understand. We say our grandmothers were refugees as well. We say our families also arrived on boats. Again we say we care while we thank our lucky stars we weren’t born in that faraway place where people are monsters and nobody cares about each other.