Sunday, December 28, 2008

Hard to concentrate

It's hard to get anything done when you can hear warplanes flying over. When you keep being pulled to the news pages to see about the hell that's breaking loose a few hundred miles away, if that. So, what do you do? You write about it. You let all the sadness and the despair out in your fiction, in an odd way, backwards and sideways, with other people, not you, and other war and violence. Does it help? Not really, because this thing is still going on. But it's all I can do. That is what there is. And this is how I process it. Or escape from it. What a terrible world we live in. And what an awful thing to have to say. May the New Year bring something else, something better, calmer.

15 comments:

Douglas Bruton said...

Thoughts and prayers with you Tania... and hope - for something, as you say, better for 2009.

D
x

annie clarkson said...

Difficult times... it's not an easy world to live in

pierre l said...

I don't do prayer, but I am certainly thinking about you, and hoping that things improve.

Tania Hershman said...

Thanks Douglas, Annie and Pierre. The more time passes the less I understand about why things are this way. Now the government is going to call up army reservists, and that means my friends, my friends' husbands, brothers, sons. And so it goes on.

Vanessa Gebbie said...

It is an appalling situation. So many wasted lives.

Cynthia Morris said...

Oh, man. You are right, the only thing you can do is write - write about it, write from it, write it.
Sending lots of love, and Florence is, too.

Group 8 said...

Hi T, I've been thinking of you today a lot. Hope things get better. N x

Jen HE said...

My thought are with you, Tania and all the innocent people caught up in this. Life is short and too precious -- I join you in hoping the New Year brings peace.

Lauri said...

I've been thinking about you today Tania, worrying about you. I don't know how it feels to live in such a place where you're being pummelled by conflict even by existing. Where to find your place to be?

It seems so perplexing to me that the place where religion is so concrete is the place where no peace can be found. Who will come forward with sanity? Who has enough moral integrity to put their hands up and say enough?

Tim Jones said...

Tania, are there many voices saying "no" to what is currently happening? And what is the prevailing mood in Israel - support, resignation, or something different?

Tania Hershman said...

V - yes, it is appalling.

Cynthia - thanks, from you and Flo!

N - so do I.

Jen, it is such a shame that more people don't see how short and precious life is.

Lauri - I am not near it, not right now anyway, but it is a small country and who knows what will happen. I am worried for my friends down there and my friends who might be called up for emergency military service. It's scary.

Tim - it's very complicated. We are all worried for the residents of Sderot and southern Israel who have Hamas rockets raining down on them constantly and have had for years, and to not respond to that doesn't seem right, something had to change - but war is such an awful thing, and it doesn't solve anything either. So what to do??

Tania Hershman said...

Also: if you want to read some Israeli news sources in English for a bit more than you get in your local news or on BBC or CNN, visit Haaretz(centre-leftish) and The Jerusalem Post(centre-rightish)

pierre l said...

You are still in your readers' thoughts Tania, and thank you for those link.

Debi said...

Sometimes it seems hope is all we have. We just have to hang onto it with all our might.

Hanging on here for you all. xxx

Tim Jones said...

Thanks, Tania - I'll check those sources out.