Terminus
Yesterday a friend sent a link to The Atlantic article featuring the winners of the 2017 World Press Photo Contest. This photo rocked my world, –that is the world of connections, coherency, the lucidity that my mind has fashioned from my 67 years of life experience. The photo is of a female, holding a wounded child. How many uncountable times has a like circumstance played out since the dawn of time? Only god knows how many times a mother, a wife, or a friend has cradled another whose life hangs in the balance. When immersed in the experience one can only reflect backwards in numb disbelief at the cause and effect chain that led to this single point of disaster.
Time for us, is a ever continuing chain of cause and effect, one thing leading to another. We typically do not think much about it. I assume that yesterdays cause creates today’s effect, which will be tomorrows….. And so on. Until it doesn’t. What random acts resulted in this kid entering the radius of the bomb blast? What dark arcane politics ended with the Palestinian carpenter turned preacher-of-peace dying publicly, slowly, of blood loss and suffocation?
I thought of Michelangelo’s Pieta. This is the only piece of his work that he actually signed. By his signature the artist drives a stake into the earth, and says, “This shows the essence.” The love, beauty, and endless sorrow of our human experience is seen in this.
Daily Life, First Prize, Singles—The Silent Victims Of A Forgotten War: At the hospital, Najiba holds her two-year-old nephew Shabir who was injured from a bomb blast in Kabul on March 29, 2016. Afghanistan has endured armed conflict since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded. Afghan civilians are at greater risk today than at any time since Taliban rule, which ended in 2001. According to UN statistics, in the first half of 2016 at least 1,600 people died, and more than 3,500 people were injured. Despite billions of dollars spent by the international community to stabilize the country, Afghanistan has seen little improvement in terms of overall stability and human security. Paula Bronstein for Time Lightbox / Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting
