fear of oblivion

"Beaten and Broken"

... to quote Dusk.

There is no excitement anymore. No spark. No hope that through the crisis we would be reborn as conscientious human beings.

We are withdrawing into ourselves, for many of us an unknown territory, and we try to focus on the challenges of each day, never, ever, making plans for the future.

We try to keep it simple. A trip to the super market. Paying a bill. Getting through another shitty day at work. We try not to look further than that. The only thing we allow ourselves to look forward to, is the weekend.

And then somebody close to you dies. Someone who was good, nurturing and honest, someone who contributed all her life to her students, her family, her friends. Who was making plans for the future, for when she would retire and then travel -mostly by train, she was afraid of flying- and spend time with her daughter, and do things for herself. Everything she had endured would have been worth it then. She died two days ago, barely 63 years old, after having spent the past two years in and out of hospitals, fighting cancer. And losing.

I mourn her loss. She meant a lot to me. I was lucky, because to me she was a teacher, family and friend. It's not easy to explain. She was like a second mother, the one who united us as a family. I don't know if I ever told her that she was the one who made me want to study film. She had taken me and my sister to see Nuovo Cinema Paradiso in 1989 and afterwards she commented that I was too young to understand the film. I felt offended, and stubborn as I am, I made sure I learnt more about film than anyone I know. To get her approval.

There is no hope for my generation. This is what will become of us, too. We will work hard all our lives, postponing life for later, for when we retire, when we'll have time to go to America, to visit our friends abroad, to see the world, only to realize that time has run out, that we managed to save no money at all and that we are not well, we have cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, whatever, and that this is it. All our life has already been lived and no dream left for the future will be fulfilled.
 
So fuck it. 

Who let the dogs out?

Nothing is surprising, nothing is shocking. The situation is evolving as expected. 

A man my age got stabbed after being targeted and chased by members of the Golden Dawn. A woman, probably his girlfriend, was holding him as they waited for an ambulance. He didn’t make it, the man who stabbed him knew where to strike. It could have been my boyfriend, it could have been me watching him bleed to death. 

Still, nothing surprising, nothing shocking. 

Contrary to what many people would like to think, this wasn’t a random act of violence. The victim, who was a rapper, was quite vocal about his political affiliations. It wasn’t only a body that was slain, a voice was also silenced.

We all kind of waited for it to happen, now it has, now everyone is condemning the act, “Golden Dawn is a threat to our democratic system” and other such nauseating statements from different party leaders. Our politicians are a threat to our democratic system. Golden Dawn is a threat to our society, to our humanity, to you and to me. 

Now we don’t joke with my friends anymore, that we should keep our voices down, in case a neo-nazi prick hears us and rings his gang of thugs to come and beat us up. We still read all the articles that appear on our facebook page from all the news sites we’re subscribed to. We ‘like’ them, we ‘share’ them. But now when we speak, we keep our voices down. And every now and then, we do look over our shoulders. And I wish this was an exaggeration.

How can this situation be reversed without violence? Without retaliation? When we live in this splendid breeding ground for polarization and hate? When ignorance and basic instincts rule? When it is now socially acceptable to declare yourself a fascist? 

It can’t.