I don’t know if it’s the point of this piece, but this speaks to me a little. I’ve found one of the most bizarre things about living through times of struggle or danger is how isolated that danger can be. There can be armed conflict happening, and a few blocks away there can be no signs of it.
I haven’t lives through war, but I felt some of this during the pandemic quarantine. I lived very close to a major civil disturbance at the time, and you wouldn’t even know it if you didn’t go looking for it. Go the other direction and it was business as usual.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
I could chip in. (Even if 9 days later)
Anyone else have similar experiences?
Yes. I went with this experience, at the very least, twice, during 2014 and 2022. It is just how it is.
Yes, bombs are falling, people who you happened to know are dying (think like your classmates who you never talked to), your favourite places getting erased from a face of the Earth.
But what else there? Unless everyone going to wake up and do something with anything — things will stay like that for a long time. And since world still functioning, almost like it used to, you still need to learn, love, work, stuff like that. War does not stop that, for better or worse.
I can not say, if that how it should be, however. I can not recommend anyone being in wars.
I don’t think there is a “should” honestly. People only have a certain capacity for strife. Like you said we need to unwind, feel loved, have moments of happiness, even in chaos. I see that as very human, and it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with actions to improve the world, either.
Thanks for sharing!
I read a piece from a guy describing his life in Germany during WW2. He said it was surreal because it wasn’t like absolutely everything stopped. You still had to get up and go to work. At least right up until the end.
He talked about being in the factory, in offices, and everyone was just going about their business and nobody spoke a word about the war. The world was on fire but you just didn’t talk about it.
Exactly!
Another thing I read this reminds me of was about the fall of Rome. It was a piece by a historian and they said for people on the outskirts of the empire, the way they experienced the fall of Rome was that no one came to fix the bridge one day. In other words, the collapse was not some far reaching destructive force. It was felt most intensely in the major government centers.
I live in the US. We ship all our war overseas.
This is, at first glance, just an idyllic outdoor dinner scene. A man presides over the table, giving a toast. A decadent lobster feast attended by seemingly wealthy, privileged people. Then you turn your attention to the left, the chair is slightly upturned. Is it the occupant leaning, or is something pushing it upwards? The man in that disturbed chair, what does his armband signify?
There are red splotches on the toasting mans arm, and the lady in the sunhat’s chest. This is from the sun shining through the wine glasses. But there’s another bit of red, a dot underneath the far mans disturbed chair. What is the source of this redness? A warning light perhaps? The initial stage of an explosion?
Look at the woman in the pink dress, she’s the only one who’s attention is not on the toaster. What is she looking at?
An interesting piece.
The woman in the sunhat looks like she’s previously been wearing the man on the left’s t-shirt with the heart cut out of the chest-piece.
The leftward directionality of it all is also intriguing. Puzzling, the whole work. I like it a lot.
I have a friend who saw them 2 times and I’m so jealous I want to bite her.
Doesn’t seem so bad.
