Beslan
When I wrote my last entry my heart was heavy enough, but I don’t think I could have imagined the carnage that was to follow.So many lives lost in Beslan and so many of them children. One twelve year old girl was shot 46 times..in the back. I have felt so sad in the last few days as I’m sure we all have, but we cant begin to get close to the grief of these folk. Of course, the Chechen rebels are not the only ones who have killed children. The British and US governments have done it for a long time. They don’t like to think they do, but they do. Wars kill children, sanctions kill children. Half a million children from Iraq died as a result of United Nations sanctions against that country, and whenever sane voices try to remonstrate in the chamber, the US veto vote smacked them down. One hundred thousand Chechen people have died in the last four years, with around forty thousand of them being children. I try desperately to understand the human soul, to try and get to a place where I can grasp something of why people do what they do. Whilst often being horrified by the actions of so many, including myself, I think I have been able to get to the point of understanding most human behaviour. I condone little, but will allow my intellect to engage in the process that brings us to acts of despair and deceit, which bring hurt and pain to others. However, in all my years of observing and writing I have never felt so unable to comprehend the cruelty we have seen. It has happened before but never quite so in our faces. Whatever drives a soul to shoot children? I have been trying to record some songs today for a covers album. Have been singing a simple love song for the past few hours. Its much easier than having to engage in some work that takes on this horror, and right now I wish that’s all I sang..simple love songs. Right now, the process of working through some of this stuff is not one I’m looking forward too, but where else do I go? We can’t just shake our heads or fists, we have to walk on and try and understand. It’s just that I don’t want to anymore, at least not today.