Letter to the Agony Aunt

Dear Ask-Aunty,

I am experiencing an overwhelming sense of self doubt.  I honestly don’t know what to do or what to think.  I am hoping you might be able to help.

I feel as though I am locked in some sealed box – as though my life has contained and restrained me, unable to break free, unable to escape, unable even to perceive of a life outside my own limited confinement.

It is as though all communication with the world has been cut off.  I feel alone.  I feel isolated.  I feel as if there is nothing but me. 

Or, perhaps, not even that.

I am beginning to doubt my own existence.  Do I actually exist?  Did I ever exist?  Is this life or is this death?  I don’t know and I think – I fear – that I might never come to know the truth.

Can one be no-one?  Can I think of my non-existence if I indeed do not exist?  Isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, how can I even begin to know anything, let alone anything of my self?

I doubt that I even exist.  There is nothing and I am nothing – that’s how I feel.  Now, though, I even begin to wonder if I feel anything at all.  How much that we ‘feel’ is real and how much is, in fact, our imagination?  How much ‘being’ is life and how much ‘life’ is actually a useless faith in some kind of existential delusion?

Do I exist?  Am I alive?  Am I dead?

I do not know and my life – if I am alive at all – is filled only with doubt and darkness.

Please, please, please help me.

Yours sincerely,

Pussy Softcusion,

(care of my owner, Erwin Schrödinger who is apparently quite famous.)

And the band played on

It started as a story but became a 'poem'.  As today is ANZAC day, I thought I'd post it here.  It is not a story of daring bravado - but rather a sad indictment of a world that still thinks violence is a solution.  And it is testimony to the fact that, while I disagree with war, I can only admire and thank those who risked or gave their lives for others.

The God that looked upon us with love just laughed,

The blood that coursed now ebbed,

Noises that first were fearful, now were unformed,

Everything now was unformed.

The flag had fluttered in the breeze,

As the band played its serenade to bravery and duty,

While the fools marched back and forth,

basking in their youth.

The girls had clapped and cheered,

and we’d marched past with stony disinterested faces

that secretly burned with delight,

in the glow of their worship.

Corners of eyes picked out pieces of our own hearts

girlfriends, wives, mothers,

And the band played out the glory to the beat of our hearts

as we marched.

But the jungles were hot and wet

and the leaches fat and bold.

We’d held our guns above our heads and waded and swam

through swamps and streams.

Our hearts still beat the rhythm

of 'duty' and 'freedom',

as we hid and fought and cried and died.

And the band still played on in our hearts.

The night was split with bullet and scream,

the lightening of gun and flame tore apart the night and day

And hate and fear marked the beat of despair

but still the band played on.

And I saw his eyes

and he saw mine

and for a moment

we were brothers.

In an instant we played and laughed and grew from children into men,

Until the stench of blood and guts and half digested meat dragged us back,

to Now,

and I knew that we were enemies again and he had become man before I.

The God that looked upon us with love just laughed.

The blood that coursed now ebbed.

Noises that first were fearful, now were unformed.

Everything now was unformed.

And the band played on.

In memory of the tiny

Today in 1949 : Nuremberg Trials ended with 19 top aids to Adolf Hitler receiving up to 25 years for their part in war crimes.

The following is a short that may have happened.  Certainly worse did.  We need to change our world.  In memory of the tiny.

There was not much blood. Small bodies have little blood anyway, but small, starved bodies have less. Or perhaps it just clots quicker.

The tiny lifeless corpse hung on the barbed wire and fried in the sun, with the tiny pool of blood under it congealing like soup. Human soup. And it smelt. And that was perhaps the worst part of it. Because the body, almost inhuman in its tortured form, could be glossed over by the heart but the smell invaded the heart and tore it into a thousand pieces. The smell of death. Young death.

In general, the children were taken and destroyed first, but somehow this one had survived. Perhaps it had been hidden well. Perhaps some incredulous pity had turned the eye of the butchers. It was hard to tell. But it had escaped the furnaces, with its parent. Parent, because gender had died along with compassion when they had entered the camp. The dead have no gender.

But then the mother was taken and the child had tried to follow, tangling itself on the barbed wire. The wire cut and through blood and tears the child had fought, not to free itself, but simply to be with its mother.

And the guards had laughed. Then shot it.

And then they ate their lunch.

And the tiny body hung. And stank. And all those who waited for their own death knew that the end of the world was come. And they named it Auschwitz.

Amazing developments ...

I am planning a book launch for Quickety Snippets - tiny tales for those on the go.  MORE on this later but stay tuned via my twitter account Jaja Toff On Twitter.

There is also a new website for Arables.   Please stop by and check it out.

 

www.arables.net

(note: .NET not .COM)