today

i really don't know where to be today. I want to be a character in my book or a musician in a band or an artist filling pages up with beautifully intricate drawings of the world around me. Or in a deep deep sleep remembering what it was to be asleep when I was a child and scared of the thunderstorms/power cuts/loud noises and shadows painted across my sliding bedroom door.

i want to be sat in that tiny bedroom on the 80's red and grey carpet my face to the floor, laying out my marbles as little villages of people with friends, parents, lovers, schools, jobs and discos across the dog hairs and bits of thread that always seem to follow me around to this day.

i want to look out of my window framed by jagged stones in the old walls, thrown together with some cement and little pieces of folded up cardboard in between to hold them in place. imagining what is written on the little pieces of paper sticking out, knowing, from previous curiosities that if i did take the time with the blade of a pair of scissors or hair clip that the letter printed will be of old concreting companies or packaging from boxes.

i want to sneak into the spare room and curl up inside the spare duvet with my book and my cat and imagine i was in a different room in a different house without a bed or home and no family to wake me up with a shout up the stairs for dinner or to feed the dogs or brush my teeth...

i want to crawl into the fields next to my house through the tunnels of long grass, smelling like fresh summer dew and new cow pats just to sit and sing to myself all the songs from all the musicals i can remember. until i actually feel embarrassed in myself for enjoying the sound of my own voice so much.

i want to take long walks in the fields of corn and rapeseed plants backing onto my house, only to cry and indulge in teenage grief of growing up and acknowledging the world moving and changing and the fact that things, however hard you try are not perfect, will never be perfect and that boys hand will never really fit perfectly into your own. because thats what the movies and books and songs i listened to told me.

i want to lie on the table outside and look at the stars and smoke my first cigarette and light candles and be warm in my clothes and confused at the state of the world to a soundtrack of the band of my youth.

i want to take more time.

i know the dream was shattered years ago when i felt my heart being pulled in two directions. but when the shards are reflected in real situations, where homes are sold and hugs mean so much more than they have ever meant, that is when the sadness fills up my heart, my throat and my eyes and i feel like i can't quite manage to hold it all down and if someone looks at me, all they will see is a big pool of water and sadness that is heavy and warm and spilling into every inch of my footsteps away from the fields of that house.

dialogue

  Now this is tricky. It makes me think of understanding, or communication and of peaceful means to settle a situation of conflict or at least provide a path to new understanding... But it's just a really really big blanket thats thrown on the situation to cover up what is actually happening. It provides an exterior of peace and calm and methodical approach to resolution. But in reality everything underneath continues to churn on, cogs spinning, wheels turning and in the sitaution of Israel and Palestine, people dying.


I have been to two very very interesting talks this week that have made me realign my own position in the row of seats I have taken to calling my own. I have always put faith in dialogue in talking and peaceful means of understanding. Then the Israeli physicians against occupation and a group of Palestinian university lecturers put forward two differing methods of resistance to the overarching omnipotent power of Israel, the nation state and the hand of god within this territory.
  Do we stop, take a step back, shake out heads and refuse to cooperate? a Kind of Gandhi-esque take on the situation, with non-cooperation where the Israelis pride themselves so fully- within the realm of academia?
  Or do we put pressure on our own to in turn put more pressure on the medical institutions of Israel? building up the force until an organization has the courage to stand up, point to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and say out loud, "Aren't Palestinians human too?"


  Having written my dissertation using numourous Israeli academics work, alongside many Palestinians and Internationals I might add, the human rights question pops up again. We all have something to say, men, women, children.. but we can choose who to listen to. We have our preference, our favourites, usually those that align strongly with our own perception of the situation. I believe an academic boycott could potentially create more walls, but this may be needed.. I dont know.
  And pressure upon our own institutions has an aura of hope, due to our own doctors and medics continuing to treat asylum seekers for free even as laws change, promoting a level standard of human rights internationally, oblivious of nationality or ethnicity or political stance.


  It's difficult. but also promising. The people apparently do care. Enough to boycott their own institutions, to go against their own high court, to rally against the state that they once moved to in order to be secure and wash away their own past of exile, loss and discrimination. Now only to be faced with imposing those terrible three upon another subjugated minority in their wake.