25.4.24 - All good

Sorry about the tache 

I know I sound very positive in these posts. I suppose I think I need to be. Mostly because of the fucking state of the planet. I mean what's there not to feel depressed about. It is true, stupidity was writ large during the so called pandemic. But the truth it is also write small every single day. The destruction of the planet. The hypnotisation of people with money. The idiocy that we do not aim for contentment and authenticity but pursue happiness. Sometimes courage does breakthrough and we have the irruption of it on campuses across countries where idealists refuse to submit to the corrupt.

Watching the bloated police officers (er why do so many of them look so unfit btw?) with their helmets and batons and armoured vehicles and mounted horses against the waiflike protesters with the kefeyehs and signboards and lists of demands and lectures and speeches and sit ins... it is pure unthinking-unfeeling-willing vs courage inspired thinking-feeling-willing. Courage in the service of others. How can you not stand on the side of the children calling for peace now? Weeping tears for the dead and dying people of Gaza who are buried in the rubble of technology and lies and injustice and greed?

Then the Sketsis up in Congress, the gnarled twisted arthritic encrusted dusty gross hideous hapless flapping politicians. Guarding the Dark Crystal. Dripping with wealth and oil and secrets and blood. Condemned by themselves to lead an existence based on the artifice granted by a power which is corrosive and drains the humanity from you a little more everyday, until all which is left is the crumbling effigy of what once used to be.

And the students - earnest, hopeful, insistent, strident, outraged, furious and willing to put their lives and self-interest on the line to defend another.

Another world is possible is what they are saying. This world. the one you have served us is no longer fit for purpose. You had your chance and you made a complete mess of it. We have had enough. Step aside. We will not be moved.

In the darkest days of my wonderings - by the way I don't wonder anymore, because everyone now has shown their hand - I used to write/think/say - I can't do anything else by just continue this path because every time I stop to pause and think, well what shall I do? Will I just fold and walk away, what happens, the voice in my head (damn you that voice!) tells me, no, you cannot. You must continue to fight on the side of the angels. You CANNOT give up. You must not betray yourself. You must battle on. If you give up now, then what happens? Whom do you join? Do you want to side with THEM? No. You can't.

Well, we go on then, silently resisting. But now, the resistance is no longer silent. People will only take jackboots on their faces for so long until they rise up. And credit where credit is due. my generation of students were perfectly useless, the millennials after that were also the same but ... this generation, the  woke generation, the generation of my children, they know what they have to do. They will no longer be lied to. The lies have just gotten too large. And the charge was led by the Gazans, who could not longer bear the cruelty inflicted by the Israelis. They are the compatriots of the university students who have started taking matters into their own hands.

So I stay positive. I have literally no more choice any longer. It was very funny yesterday when I told my class about Prime and other stupid things which they can choose to do... when you are 40 years old and I am dead, because I will be dead by the time you all are 40, you can come to my grave and say to me, Stephanie I now have no more teeth and a bad heart and I have diabetes and I should have listened to you. And then you can hear me say "I...told...you...so..." in a spooky voice and they all laughed.

It's nice to laugh about serious things.