‘then one day i started thinking.’
23 December, 2007 | 5 comments | Category: book snip, peace & conflict, thinking...
…merely wanted to transcribe this train of thought…the crossroads call for it….
“To makes things simpler, Rieux, let me begin by saying I had the plague already, long before I came to this town and encountered it here. Which is tantamount to saying I’m like everybody else. Only there are some people who don’t know it, or feel at ease in that condition; others know and want to get out of it. Personally, I’ve always wanted to get out of it.
When I was young I lived with the idea of my innocence; that is to say, with no idea at all. I’m not the self-tormenting kind of person, and I made a suitable start in life. I brought off everything I set my hand to, I moved at ease in the field of intellect, I got on excellently with women, and if I had occasional qualms, they passed as lightly as they came. Then one day I started thinking. And now —-”
“…When I was seventeen my father asked me to come to hear him speak in court…The only picture I carried away with me of that day’s proceedings was a picture of the criminal. I have little doubt he was guilty…That little man of about thirty, with sparse, sandy hair, seemed so eager to confess everything, so genuinely horrified at what he had done and what was going to be done with him. He looked like a yellow owl scared blind by too much light. You understand –he was a living human being…something seemed to grip my vitals at that moment…I only knew that they were set on killing that living man.
…I’ve had to dwell on my start in life, since for me it really was the start of everything…I tried all sorts of jobs, and did not do too badly. But my real interest in life was the death penalty; I wanted to square accounts with that poor owl on the dock. So I became an agitator, as they say. I didn’t want to be pestiferous, that’s all. To my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence, and by fighting the established order I’d be fighting against murder.
…In any case, my concern was not with arguments. It was with the poor owl; with that foul procedure whereby dirty mouths stinking of plague told a fettered man that he was going to die, and scientifically arranged things so that he should die, after nights and nights of mental torture where we waited to be murdered in cold blood…nothing in the world would induce me to accept any argument that justified such butcheries.
…All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. You see, I have heard quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak-and to act- quite clearly. That’s why I say there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than that. I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it’s a fact one doesn’t come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That is why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category…to peace.”
Tarrou in The Plague
I’ve been reading this book for some time now, struggling with getting the pages turned…until today when I hit the inflection point. To my mind Tarrou talks about personal choices each of us have to make; to work ‘with’ the world order, to work ‘against’ the world order [to fight it], or as he hesitantly acknowledges …to be ‘healers’ of the order.
In the midst of his abstract thoughts, he poses an intriguing question, after he proclaims “It comes to this, what interests me is learning how to become a saint.” Reiux retorts “But you don’t believe in God.” “Exactly! Can one be a saint without God? -that is the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today.”
The book closes with this statement: “…quite simply what we learn in pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.“
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‘then one day i started thinking.’
23 December, 2007 | 5 comments | Category: book snip, peace & conflict, thinking...
…merely wanted to transcribe this train of thought…the crossroads call for it….
“To makes things simpler, Rieux, let me begin by saying I had the plague already, long before I came to this town and encountered it here. Which is tantamount to saying I’m like everybody else. Only there are some people who don’t know it, or feel at ease in that condition; others know and want to get out of it. Personally, I’ve always wanted to get out of it.
When I was young I lived with the idea of my innocence; that is to say, with no idea at all. I’m not the self-tormenting kind of person, and I made a suitable start in life. I brought off everything I set my hand to, I moved at ease in the field of intellect, I got on excellently with women, and if I had occasional qualms, they passed as lightly as they came. Then one day I started thinking. And now —-”
“…When I was seventeen my father asked me to come to hear him speak in court…The only picture I carried away with me of that day’s proceedings was a picture of the criminal. I have little doubt he was guilty…That little man of about thirty, with sparse, sandy hair, seemed so eager to confess everything, so genuinely horrified at what he had done and what was going to be done with him. He looked like a yellow owl scared blind by too much light. You understand –he was a living human being…something seemed to grip my vitals at that moment…I only knew that they were set on killing that living man.
…I’ve had to dwell on my start in life, since for me it really was the start of everything…I tried all sorts of jobs, and did not do too badly. But my real interest in life was the death penalty; I wanted to square accounts with that poor owl on the dock. So I became an agitator, as they say. I didn’t want to be pestiferous, that’s all. To my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence, and by fighting the established order I’d be fighting against murder.
…In any case, my concern was not with arguments. It was with the poor owl; with that foul procedure whereby dirty mouths stinking of plague told a fettered man that he was going to die, and scientifically arranged things so that he should die, after nights and nights of mental torture where we waited to be murdered in cold blood…nothing in the world would induce me to accept any argument that justified such butcheries.
…All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. You see, I have heard quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak-and to act- quite clearly. That’s why I say there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than that. I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it’s a fact one doesn’t come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That is why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category…to peace.”
Tarrou in The Plague
I’ve been reading this book for some time now, struggling with getting the pages turned…until today when I hit the inflection point. To my mind Tarrou talks about personal choices each of us have to make; to work ‘with’ the world order, to work ‘against’ the world order [to fight it], or as he hesitantly acknowledges …to be ‘healers’ of the order.
In the midst of his abstract thoughts, he poses an intriguing question, after he proclaims “It comes to this, what interests me is learning how to become a saint.” Reiux retorts “But you don’t believe in God.” “Exactly! Can one be a saint without God? -that is the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today.”
The book closes with this statement: “…quite simply what we learn in pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.“
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nonchalant I
17 December, 2007 | No comments | Category: ethnicity, i.mmigration, peace & conflict, thinking...
“nonchhaalant…!”
she proclaimed, as she described one of those criss-crossy-sweater-wearing ’so what?’ types to me…
…the type that oversleeps an international conference call and emails out a casually-put “ehhh” email scoffing at the fact that he was not even jet-lagged. The type that collects obese benefit packages and flexible hours to lounge on government/investment money; because he played the game right. He knew the right people, fit the right profile or once in some past he has been through a prestigious college~graduate school.
…excuse my intonations but nonchOllaaant, i feel! …like this dude, and frankly, it’s quite pathetic!
whether i have the same access to power~money as dude’s type, is another issue… |maybe perceived helplessness excuses indifference? for sanity’s sake?|
this blooming nonchalance reminds me of 3:
During a heated discussion about what a friend saw as a grotesque lack of activism and a fascination with the commercial glitz of america …she asks “Do the African students on campus not care what is happening in their countries?!”
During a class period, a professor (an Africanist, a white woman from the ‘American’ mid-west) went ahead and asked the question painful for the ears: “Is an African’s life worth least in this world?”.
During one incarnation of a discussion on Africa…a southern african asks “why do you northerners always fight???”
phew… anyway, i need to change my news sources and find a new perspective. cos boy this world is getting uncompromisingly predictable!! its like the world is on the looping setting, playing the same scene over and over and…! and that’s drenching flaming passion in blah! it is disconcerting…
c’mon, you can go ahead and say it!!: “duh, where have you been your whole life? venus?” …lol …Ask me again!
“Ethiopia denies Somalia bombing
Ethiopia has denied involvement in an mortar attack that killed at least 17 people in the main market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Thursday. More gunfire and explosions were heard near Bakara market on Friday morning, but there are no details of casualties.…”
Zimbabwe’s precarious survival/ Starving in Harare
With the Zimbabwean economy in ruins, it is the people leaving the country who are helping those who have remained to survive.
Bread queues
A couple of hours later, as dawn breaks over the capital, many people – the mothers and unemployed – start forming long, silent queues that wind around entire blocks of the city.
There is a rumour that bread could be arriving in the city today. (more…)
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patterns of sole edges
12 December, 2007 | No comments | Category: love.of.words!
scouring
across the tamarack
across the curb frames of the path
abrupt movements into spirals. in haphazard dazedness…
concealing head in a black hood hiding from. hiding to. from
hidden
focused on patters of sole edges
staring without seeing
lost in puzzlement, seemingly enthralled. though it only seems
the curves and cervices of the maze, the spirally routine spacial exchange.
i do. i walk a lot….
maybe the life thirsts a secret.
connect
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