I was not born in English

In About me in this blog you’ll read:

It takes me too long to write anything: a day, three trains, one hundred poems, a few deaths, one sorrow and the present tense.

When I wrote these verses “about” me more than two decades ago, I didn’t fully know how true they were. But I guess, in the search for my creative voice, I already had a sense of what moved me slowly, sometimes reluctantly, towards expressing myself through writing.

So now again, here, almost three years later. What has happened?

For sure, many trains and many planes to and fro to Greece and elsewhere. I don’t know if it’s a hundred poems, and if so, many of them remained in my head or in orphaned lines, in several inconsistently kept notebooks, short captions for photos on Instagram, e-mails, and messages to friends and family. A few deaths, yes, a few in the family: a sister-in-law and a father. The latter belongs to the one sorrow one has, and I dare to say this one sorrow is the same for every single human on this earth: losing loved ones, missing them, facing, through the loss, the declining time for oneself too. A shared sorrow is not less painful, but this realisation certainly helps one with dealing with it.

And so it all comes down to the present tense needed. Needed as everyday time to write, needed as space content, as the present tense includes not just the written but also the writer. I look around and see. I look around and do not see. I look around and am seen, or not.

In Losing Touch, written during the Covid pandemic, I had expressed my hope of us coming out of this mayhem as a wiser humanity. The related poem ended, though, with a question mark. I couldn’t be sure, and human history could only make one doubtful of an imminent enlightened future. Just think of the 20th century, and the WWII following WWI and a pandemic during it, not even one full generation later. But this, this around us, is still hard to bear: endless wars and killings, governments and large groups of people turning away from the humanitarian values and goals that we had taken, maybe foolishly so, for granted for decades. Even further than that: a shameless despising of those values is getting louder and mutes in despair many of us who can still feel shame at the sight of cruelty, immorality, dishonesty, and hybris.

This has never been a blog directly commenting on current political or other events. But the present tense drove me back here, to a quieter place where I can again post verses, photos, and whatever else is born out of the question mark over our heads. I got tired of the scattering and superficial possibilities of the diverse social media sites and long to return to a place where I can gather and save.

Forgive my absence, and thank you for reading these lines.

Jesus on the cross is Good Friday‘s most “popular” image. And it’s not far away from what many people go through somewhere, not always far away, actually never far away, from us.
The war in Ukraine, the bombings in Israel and the never ending conflict at the occupied Palestinian territories, the civilian pain and hunger in Afghanistan, the many forgotten wars, ecological disasters in the so-called Global South, the bloody borders of the so-called Western World, deathly traps for refugees, for people who run away from all catastrophes mentioned. Crossed people, crossed nature and closed crossings, on land, on water, and often, in our minds.
Last week in Switzerland I enjoyed the majestic landscape and the cities of the well-living. I also visited though an underground military fortress and bunker, built in the 1930s, now a military museum. Few people know that neutral Switzerland is actually a highly weaponised country and producer of military equipment. It is a country fascinated by the idea of self defence, of being prepared for an upcoming attack. Historically it has certainly to do with having the German Reich as a neighbour, partly to profit from, partly to be scared of, but the fascination with the own military efficiency didn’t change even decades after all neighbour countries stopped being a threat.
The gorgeous Swiss mountains are thoroughly pierced with tunnels and bunkers, its citizens are as armed as any US one, and they are even very proud of their naval (!) forces. On top of all that Switzerland is still greatly powered by nuclear energy.
There is the world we see, the majestic Alps, the beautiful rural landscapes, the rich cities with their international inhabitants, but there’s more than what we see on first sight, as there is everywhere of course, and therefore Switzerland stands as a metaphor for my reflections today.
Good Friday has always been a day to think of our dead and of the people suffering, near and far away. It is also a day to think of what is worth living for, of what is worth taking a stand for, of how much can we do, offer, say to help others in need, to better this world. Yes, let’s do not lose hope or will to do just that.