This stopped me in my tracks. I'd photographed the blocks before and noticed that one said WAR but because of how it was placed the word wasn't shocking. Like this, though, and it made me shudder.
I saw it a few days before and again the day after the 11th day of the 11th month... so maybe I should see it as a sign of remembrance rather than a rather unnerving threat.
There are wars or on-going conflicts right now, right NOW, in around three dozen countries, most of them in the Middle East, North West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and a major ongoing drug-war in Mexico. The worst - in terms of casualties - are Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Mexico and Yemen. Then: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cameroon,Colombia, DR Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania and Tunisia. there's political instability in Lebanon, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, tensions in the East China Sea, the North Korea crisis, Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the Nagorno-Karabahk conflict, tensions between the USA and Iran.. problems in Pakistan, CAR, Turkey, Egypt, Ukraine, Venezuala. Some are getting worse, none are decreasing in intensity.
It's numbingly awful.
The word itself, without all this dreadful context, has power. In fact, it's astonishing to acknowledge the emotional force of a word. I recall Dan Siegal saying the words NO and YES loudly and asking people to notice their physiological response. I feel I live much of the time in the NO response and only occasionally relax into the YES.
That makes me think of Molly Bloom's famous words at the end of Ulysses.
What would it be like to feel a resounding YES?
I did feel a YES today. I went to the park and saw CD digging in the lawn of the outdoor bowling club. I peered through the fence and he looked up and saw me. He rose into the YES of the air and flew to land next to me in a tree.
Peace, between Crow and Crone.
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