Today was a series of coincidental events. Or perhaps they were not so much coincidental, but complementary, as they all helped me see a bigger picture during the latter of the day.
First, I woke up with an urge to listen to one of my favorite songs of all time, “Samba Pa Ti” by no other than, Santana. I’m so in love with this song. It has absolutely no words, yet says everything. There is something so magical and moving and breathtaking about a song that captures that array of emotion without uttering a single syllable. Carlos Santana is a genius. And there is nothing quite like a beautiful spanish guitar.
After listening to this song on repeat for the majority of the morning, I went off to class…with my head in the clouds and the guitar riffs still sounding in my ear. But I was abruptly pulled away from my daydreaming once our class discussion started.
We have been learning about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and though learning about these conflicts often disturbs and saddens me, today I learned about Rachel Corrie. Her story literally moved me to tears. Rachel Corrie was a young activist killed while trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home. She was ran over, deliberately, by an Israeli bulldozer. The bulldozer was supplied by the U.S. government and manufactured in no other but the U.S.A. Rachel was 23 years old. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed by the Israeli army in the same bloodless, inhumane, manner, and continue to be killed in the same way.
What shocks me the most is that this occurred in 2003 and I do not have any recollection of it ever being on the news. The fact that this was the first time that not only I, but my classmates as well, had heard of this, is disturbing on so many levels. The whole matter disgusts me.
After class, I was left sickened (literally and emotionally) by mankind. I was outraged. I felt insignificant, helpless and deceived. What hope is there to make any sort of change in the world when someone as headstrong and hopeful as Rachel Corrie gets killed the way she did? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of someone coldly murdering some one in such a manner. It is still incomprehensible to me. I had no words.
Afterward, while trying to snap myself out of my mood, I came across this story in Guernica magazine.
“Half the world hasn’t heard one word about the other half…I’ve spent forty years of my life listening to birds, I know everything there is to know about bird song. But I can’t sing myself. I’ve never in my life written a line. I wanted to be a poet, but I’ve never been able to write a word.”
I liked the story so much, that I looked up the author, Kirmen Uribe - “His debut poetry collection, Bitartean heldu eskutik, won Spain’s 2001 Premio de la Crítica, and has since been translated from the Basque into Spanish, French, and, in 2007, into English as Meanwhile Take My Hand”. Naturally, being so impulsive with my reading, I decided I had to have his book. So I ran to Barnes & Noble, looked up the book and discovered that the title of his book Bitartean heldu eskutik - Meanwhile Take My Hand, is as he explains, “what you say when there’s nothing at all you can say.”
How perfect.
