Late-night ramblings V

Carter: "You know, I consider myself reasonably well-informed. [But] before I came, I hadn't heard a thing about the Congo."

Debbie: "Nobody at home gives a damn about what happens here."

Carter (smiles wryly): "[Because there's] no oil. Millions of people are getting slaughtered, and we're too busy eating our Happy Meals."

-- E.R., Season 10, Episode 2 (The Lost)

I think that even when I'm not entirely conscious of it, I'm always searching. I don't know if the ostensible scarcity is a true reflection of the profound lack of it, or if it is my own blindness that hinders the pursuit, but sometimes, all I really want is to see some semblance of generosity -- perhaps not even that -- just an awareness of something bigger than the self; be that God, or the Congo, or even just your next-door neighbour -- anything.

Something to tell me that you understand that kinship goes beyond biology.

Something to tell me that you understand that the nature of compassion is precisely that it defies logic.

Something to tell me that you understand that the things you say, and when you choose to say them, can have irreparable consequences on another's life.

Something to tell me that you care about someone other than yourself, and because of that, will tell me so much more about you.

Something not just in the things you say and do, but in the way you live.

Someone that doesn't keep on repeating: "That's not my problem."

***

What's it gonna take to slow us down -
To let the silence spin us around?
What's it gonna take to drop this town?
We've been spinning at the speed of sound.

Stepping out of those convenience stores,
What could we want but more more more?
From the Third World to the corporate core -
We are the symphony of modern humanity.

If we're adding to the noise, turn off this song.
If we're adding to the noise, turn off your stereo, radio, video...

I don't know what they're gonna think of next -
Genetic engineering of the most high tech;
A couple new ways to fall into debt.
I'm a nervous wreck, but I'll bet

That that TV set tells us what we've wanted to hear;
But none of these sound bites are coming in clear.
From the Third World to the corporate ear -
We are the symphony of modern humanity.

-- "Adding to the Noise" by Jonathan & Tim Foreman

***

She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. "A better explanation," she says, "is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas."

"I don't follow. What is it that you can't say?"

"It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participating in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! [...] Yet... I look into your eyes, into Norma's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you?"

-- Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee