Friday 15 July 2016

There are no words.




I never know what to do when tragedy strikes, out in the world. My own world is very small, and, in some ways, very sheltered. When I go down to the field each morning to let the dogs play and to tend to the horses, it feels as if we are hidden from all the bad things and the mad things and the sad things. Nobody can see us there. We are sheltered by a high hill and stretches of dense woodland. I have a friend who shares the field with me. Her young daughter christened it The Magic Paddock, and there is something magical about it.

My house is small and sheltered too, but the world comes in there when I turn on the wireless or switch on the internet to hear the news. There, suddenly, in vivid colours, is that distant, outside world, with its living and dying, its tectonic shifts, its sudden political shocks.

As social media gallops and wheels in its wild, wide prairies of news, there can be almost an imperative to say something. Sometimes it feels as if everyone must react to everything, must have an opinion, must choose the right thing to say. I find the right thing to say almost impossible. Sometimes, I don’t say anything at all, because mere paltry human words in the face of unspeakable grief and loss and horror seem pointless and gimcrack. A huge thing has happened; why should anyone need to know what my own small feeling about it is? It can seem self-regarding, jumping on any passing bandwagon. Look at me, caring. On the other hand, to speak about ordinary things can seem callous and stupid. Can I really put up a picture of Stanley the Dog on Facebook when eighty-four people lie dead in the street?

But what word do you use for those eighty-four lost souls? Even the language of Shakespeare and Milton seems to come up short. It is shocking, and heartbreaking, and beyond human imagination. It is mad and wrong and lunatic. Yet every word one slaps on the horror seems too thin and small.

All the same, people will write the words, will stretch out uncertain fingers for the words, will try to make the nonsensical make sense with the words. Some good, wise people will use the right words, to reach out across oceans and incomprehensions, across time and distance, from one wounded heart to another. Some people will have the words, and will act as stalwarts, as witnesses, as consolers, if any consolation is to be found.

As I stood in that hidden, magical field this morning, with my little brown mare, who is the kindest, sweetest, most gentle animal I ever met, there were words in my ear. I was listening to a portable radio, and something rather extraordinary happened. It was Desert Island Discs, and Nicole Farhi was on. The programme had obviously been recorded some days before, and as she said, blithely and happily, that she grew up in Nice, I felt a visceral shock. She could speak of Nice with innocence, because she did not know what was to happen there. It was haunting and moving and added an extra twist to the tragedy. It somehow made it more touching that she was such a lovely woman, charming and engaged and thoughtful. She was all light and goodness, on such a dark day.

And then she chose Ne Me Quitte Pas by Jacques Brel for one of her records. I listened to that beloved singer of songs singing ‘don’t leave me’ in the quiet Scottish morning. The mare rested her sweet head against my shoulder. I thought of all those people, celebrating in their happy, peaceful streets, in the moments before tragedy struck. I thought of the ones who had left, against their will, torn violently from life and laughter by actions the human mind can barely understand.


It was a very strange moment. Listening to that most tender of voices was both lovely, and heart-rending. It is a time when words are not enough, and yet Brel had the right words. ‘I will make a kingdom where love will be king.’ If only it could be so. If only. 

11 comments:

  1. Reduced to tears. Amazing how this internet can join us together, the global us, our tears the first drops of a vast sea in a kingdom where love could be king.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When there are no words, Tania, somehow you find words. Because that is what you do... Thanks as always - your ability to express the tangled feelings in my own head always leaves me breathless. I wish the occasions that prompt it weren't so often tragic. Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  3. Funny how the wireless provides, I have noticed the abundance of the airwaves many times, especially in times of need. Synchronicity is such a strange substance.

    Joe Cox's funeral today, too. There's another one for you...

    ReplyDelete
  4. All of us too, us here in the USA, me in Texas.
    Many times I've watched Bastille Day fireworks on the beach in Cannes, always a glittering and beautiful and joyous occasion. Now, there is no way I won't remember this tragedy. The entire sane world needs to push our governments to find a way to end these barbarians.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What I say may be easily misinterpreted, so to start with: I don't in any way, shape or form condone or excuse acts such as went on in Nice last night, or terrorism in any form. But I can't help wondering what so many families in the Middle East felt during the conflicts in Iraq. We heard about some of the damage, most of it by US troops because we had the most people there, but also from allied and UK forces as well--the sheer destruction and the people killed. To us in the west, it was numbers, and it was a war zone. But it was death for so many innocent people. We couldn't share in their grief because it didn't really connect with us, but in the end, it is all the same, so many innocent lives lost.

    If ever there was a time for coming together, instead of splitting apart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The very words shock and awe horrified me. We do operate an appalling double standard, to mourn those like us, doing the types of things we do, if they are mown down while doing it, but a wedding celebration in Pakistan hit by drone?

      Yeah. Numbers of "others" are smaller than the same number of "ours".

      Delete
  6. What I say may be easily misinterpreted, so to start with: I don't in any way, shape or form condone or excuse acts such as went on in Nice last night, or terrorism in any form. But I can't help wondering what so many families in the Middle East felt during the conflicts in Iraq. We heard about some of the damage, most of it by US troops because we had the most people there, but also from allied and UK forces as well--the sheer destruction and the people killed. To us in the west, it was numbers, and it was a war zone. But it was death for so many innocent people. We couldn't share in their grief because it didn't really connect with us, but in the end, it is all the same, so many innocent lives lost.

    If ever there was a time for coming together, instead of splitting apart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, computer demons struck ... not sure why this posted twice. Have have made comments on much happier topics that I would have been delighted to see repeat themselves.

      Delete
  7. Less than two weeks ago a car bomb in a busy Baghdad shopping center killed more than 200 people, many of them children at the center's amusement mall. Hundreds of others were wounded. Apparently the death count is now closer to 300. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
    On May 16 in Baghdad at least eight separate bombings killed 101 people and nearly 200 were injured. (Something called) the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant claimed responsibility for these.
    I'm not Iraqi; I know no one who IS Iraqi.

    I have stopped trying to wrap my head around events such as these -- because I get so sad, crazy, furious and fearful all at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The oddest thing about "if only it could be so" is that all it would take for it to BE so, would be for each individual to decide to do the right thing. Not to make others do the right thing, but just themselves. If each singular person just concentrated on doing, themselves, what was right and good, the entire world would be different in an instant. Isn't that amazing?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Many years ago, I asked a dear Rwandan friend: how do we stop it happening again?

    She thought for a moment and said: we can't. You can only be your good self. Be the bridge. Be kind. Do what you can, yourself.

    She also said: if you were to die in an enemy or tribal attack would you want the world to stop turning? Well how do you think those who have died would feel? And those who killed them?

    I thought then, and I think now: I would not want anyone to live a lesser life because of the horror in which I died. I'd like people to respond to my death with a fierce proliferation of pictures of kittens. Or Stanley the dog.

    I don't pretend this is the only way to respond, or the most practical way. And to respond to the world's horrors in this way still feels disrespectful. But I think it must be one good way.

    ReplyDelete

Your comments give me great delight, so please do leave one.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin