First you figure out who you are not;
then you figure out who you are;
finally, you figure out you are not who.
Tag: culture
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Who are you?
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Socrates
What kills us is certainty,
unwavering conviction that we are doing the right thing.
The ends have to be unquestioned to justify the means,
questions leave room for empathy and doubt.
Socrates – the man who said that the only certainty is the lack thereof –
died because of his stubborn conviction that he knew the right thing to do.
Because eventually even the bravest of us give in
to the comfort of certain death
after a lifetime in the quicksand of uncertain truths.
The only solution is love
because it makes truth less important than life.
If Socrates had children,
he would have lived longer
and died without leaving a legend. -
This is what democracy looks like:
A lot of people making the same decision they always did – or no decision at all.
Making new decisions is difficult.
It carries a risk of making a mistake and offers no certain reward.
It’s fundamentally unsafe.
Better not.
Quite a few people working hard for no gratitude, no acclaim and not much money.
For the sake of decency.
A lot of people working hard for no reason – only money and thinking they are better than the rest.
They always fail.
There’s always someone richer.
A few people yelling as loud as they can – their grievances, their ambitions, their theirness –
Anything to be seen, for they only feel real when reflected in the eyes of others.
The eyes turn away and they have to raise the volume.
Crowds marching, covered in the mantle of righteousness, in the warmth of the herd.
Belonging.
Dozens of people thinking, writing, quoting.
Trying hard for new decisions – and never mind the cost.
A lone man standing in front of a tank in Tianamen square.
The first person to climb over the Berlin wall.
A woman dumping green ink into the voting box in Moscow.
This is what democracy looks like:
Each of us alone with his choice. -
Observation
Nothing makes us worse than pathetic attempts to prove that we are intrinsically better than someone else.
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Sleeping Beauty
With gratitude to a friend and a poet, Yana Kane, who asked this question – and inspired so many others.
White monolithic marble
slowly flows into
blue, where curling spires,
gradually exhausted,
fade into sky and vanish.
Tracing intricate movement,
my gaze, under its enchantment,
takes me away and out
where there is no sound,
colour or time – just spaces
still but containing movement.
Somewhere in these spires
there’s an enchanted princess
sleeping a hundred years
and one.
And then?
[question from the audience]
What happens
In year one hundred and two?
And then…
When a miracle happens it gives you a choice –
it defies the prediction’s imperious voice.
If the prince failed to show and give you a kiss
you can give happy ending a miss.
You can stay in your own unchanged universe
and ignore the fairy’s presumptuous curse.
You can stick middle finger to human endeavour –
Sleeping Beauty, enchanted forever. -
Night Light
Tell me a kind fairy tale:
I will listen with open-mouthed absorbtion;
I will look at you with shining eyes;
I will laugh and cry in all the right places –
I will be the best listener in the world.
Tell me a kind fairy tale, please! -
Roots
I come from a city
with people born on a blacklist.
I come from a country
which has since ceased to exist.
I come from a culture
where nothing is what it seems,
full of loud delusions and stifling truths,
where language conceals.
I grew on an ice flow that was cracking and breaking in spring.
I had to grow my roots wide.
So far that they reached different shores.
So strong that they gripped, and mauled, and changed the shoreline.
So solid that I became a bridge.
Now, bridges are never safe.
Never as safe as the solid land –
or at least they don’t seem to be.
They sway in the wind,
they rely on a few points of contact,
they have to strive just to stay in place.
You could transport a bridge to a safer place,
sell it like the proverbial Brooklyn Bridge
and make some cash on the way,
or move it for real –
to a safe harbour, out of the wind.
But even a broken bridge across the gap
has more purpose than a bridge on solid land,
it remains rooted in both shores,
forever a possibility. -
Sad, but true
Russian, American, English, Egyptian – we are all suckers.
Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist – we are all suckers.
Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Democrat – we are all suckers.
We’ve sold our humanity for the right to belong.
