Hot July this one and fires are blazing across a bleeding Athens. Images of grey smoke over Parthenon pollute every TV screen, wounded dogs scanning acres and acres of land turned into this trail of ashes, the scanning, swollen faces of those too close to flames, not close enough to go missing, faces swollen, swollen by smoke and agony and tears, when dreams, livelihoods are burned, ashes, livelihoods turned upside down, nothing remains but tears. I change channels but nothing (ever) changes, another journalist in a bold haircut and grey suit appears. It’s a grey, hot July, somewhere close to home not close enough to feel like home.
Yet it’s the cold, sarcastic tone of a colleague’s ‘kind regards’ that brings me closest to tears. The apathy of the sender who types, sends then disappears. The silence of the arsonist behind the keyboard, the way people fire words, with no regrets, into this void space of the internet, the way people fire words like missiles into the known world of what they’ve labelled to themselves as the ‘unknown’. The way our preoccupation with ‘self’ clouds what would have otherwise been crystal clear judgment, the way it engulfs collaborative instinct in deception. Deception may be a powerful tool, but delusion is a much more powerful weapon in the end that we all think – deluded as we are – that we own. I fired words, carelessly, this lazy, hot summer, in my mum’s direction. Seems we were both just careless enough to fuel each other’s emotions passed boiling point and, it’s true, it’s possible, destruction sometimes begins with very good intentions.
Hot July this one and when the fires are over, I am in a fully airconditioned car, making my way to the airport, on my way to rainy London, when I hear the act was intentional, the radio is catching fire with suspicions of a criminal act of no ethical dimension. My dad and I pause our deep conversations for a second, these impassioned debates about the fallacy of money and my deflated dreams of making it big in the legal profession. There’s so many things bigger than us, dad, and justice’s never served and I feel like a 17-year-old rebel again, handicapped by age and my well-sheltered upbringing. Dad, this is not where I wanted to be, this is not where I intended to be going. And dad, are your hands still clean, if you do not spark the fires but still remain complicit in the crime. And if we all watch the smoke from afar, is it because we are too small to make a difference or is it because we know we can choke in smoke if we get close enough to matter.
With my limited knowledge and clouded judgment, it seems that the absence of conscience should be as good as an element of crime as the presence of motive.
Rational Artist 