No Time to Hate - Paris Was Nice Last Summer
Jan Hamminga
The subterranean traveller and Trandi Romantic had a jolly good time in Paris late August last year, where the mood was gentle and people had clever ways of avoiding undesired outcomes. Don't like my face? Just look the other way. This is what multiculturalism is all about, isn't it? Not get worked up about any differences one might sense, rather concentrate on similarities. The ridiculous prohibition on headscarves and veils of course adds to the sense of equalness. How to tell the difference when the obvious signs are lacking? The traveller and Trandi neatly fit in, as is their style, and happily started roaming the streets, being stupid sometimes but cast with luck, as the holiday mood so often has it. Whenever they met the tourist trail they just rushed straight through, get it done with quickly style. There were fewer chemtrails overhead than in their hometown that time of year, with even a clean day in between, so no need to get bogged down by ugly realities. Just have fun while it lasts.
Inside the many museums they visited the subterranean had dozens of beautiful women to admire, women all so gorgeous-looking these days. Trandi would drag him before paintings she had to tell him about and the subterranean listened carefully while leaving another shot at some piece for in between pictures, doing the by and large same route, same room, opposite walls style routine, then returning to art's take on beauty for a while and so forth. They went to more outlandish galleries as well where visitors were scarce and where it was them and the painting, more often the thingy, getting it off on being in flow together. The one thing they didn't particularly like was the food. It was expensive and hastily made, to their taste. They settled for salads and asian snack bars, eating marmalade and cheese in their rent apartment for supper.
Not everybody lives quite as nicely as the nicely living. They occupy a large swath around the tourist trail and carefully shielded streets of extreme wealth where the sheer amount of money breathes might, plus all the tiers in between. In this better world, the world we know from television and have been told to admire, the city's various cultures are not evenly represented. It's the young and handsome who are invited into the realms of power and it's always on an individual base. If you've got what it takes to make money from, you're in. And you're even allowed to pretend you are you, to gimmick the rebel inside. So you will see people of all colours and stripes join the party, but children and pensioners are still mostly white.
Outside this inner ring life quickly became ordinary, though it never seemed anywhere worse than scrappy yet not hopeless, pretty much what Trandi and the traveller were used to at home. Of course from their point of view signs of stress were filtered out, not to be discovered in merely a week's time that is. They stayed behind Nation in an early mix-up zone just inside Paris Férique and often passed République into town, checking out on fashion and style, more of the latter they found, then split up to go separate ways and meet again later. They did everything their budget allowed for that week, spending on people in a city that seemed very much at ease with itself, a city which had lost a lot of previously felt rudeness (now even with pedestrian zones), before taking the train home to a thriftier lifestyle.
Now they hear there's a mass shooting at an editor's in Paris, television talking about the area they had come to scramble, lots of bodies, very professional, then they lose an ID, how convenient, where have we heard that one before? Of course, all suspected perpetrators are killed before they can speak. Opposing minds conveniently commit suicide. One photo by the way was apparently enough to identify two brothers. Modern life is full of such miracles, have you noticed? Many dark fairy tales are spun around us, like the mad stories people see in the movies. Better not notice as much, seems healthier you'd say, but that's the 24 7 experience for you.
When people fall for the meme and politicians take up the front row of mourning and protest, the ones we loath and despise for selling our souls to the war machine, then it's time to set the alarm bells ringing. When apparent coincidences are fruitful and new laws curbing our rights and liberties are passed swiftly, then you know everything was well-planned. How did they pull it off this time, eh? And who pulled what? Wanting to know the answer is where you go wrong, because nobody will provide you, yet the question needs being asked all the time. The powers that be really seem hell-bent for havoc (not a metal band) and every next round more of our strength is required, more of our desire to maintain the society we believed we had built. Most people want to live together peacefully, make friendship where it feels good and keep a respectful distance where it doesn't. Some are trying to break the peace, but some are always breaking the peace, whatever the source. We have learned to bear their burden, you know the type, the managers, the bankers, the common assholes. Recently though, our governments have entered the fight. Through their own secret agencies and those of friendly nations they are willing to kill us to further an agenda. We thought this only happened in America. Now it's coming here. Our governments are going rogue on us. Think back to 3.11, 7.7, 3.11, MH17, now 7.1. Think of the Ukraine in general and the vast world behind it that we are now going to say goodbye to because some hotshot decided so. The people of Europe really need to confront this threat. We have many serious problems, environmental problems foremost, and this is no time to hate. If we give in to this shit, we know we are not going to save the world. Instead we will be joining the worldwide civil war, spreading soon to a country near you, the third world war which will completely destroy our societies, destroy the world we grew up in. I always thought we could easily live it out a good other century, find some cure in the meantime, but that was before the mad killer machine went into overdrive. If we don't stop this, if we don't resist to partake any longer in this suicidal ritual, then we will see it all slip away from under us. I wrote a poem about this a long time ago, in dutch, De Aarde scheurt onder je voeten , a nightmarish dream about ultimate survival in climate chaos, put on a nervous rhyme. I quite liked it myself, I read it sometimes before public. I hadn't thought it would come true so quickly, though.
Thinking that the not quite there yet meme is wearing thin, it's time to go green on a massive scale. If worldwide we start taking care of ourselves and our neighbours, grow as much food as we can and save as much on feeding the beast, saving not just money but economic input as well, slowly minimizing its impact through the force of our common will, then we might have something interesting going, something worth living for.
Now that would be nice.
