{npm ’26 • 22}

(NB:if you’re not in a good place mentally, please come visit tomorrow.)

Earlier this year, the local brew pub/movie theater in the next town over showed the Oscar-nominated short films. I didn’t check the listens carefully, merely going along with a friend (NEVER. AGAIN.), and we ended up seeing the year’s nominated documentary shorts. We went out expecting Pixar. We got inhumanity piled to infinity. Five films, but it took weeks to breathe past the shadow of their hollow grief.

One of the short films was called Were And Are Gone, about silent protestors in Tel Aviv protesting the genocide against Palestine by simply holding up the pictures of the twenty-five thousand children who had died with the words “Was And Is No More.” Though of course there was some thoughtful response, mostly it was brutal, to state it mildly, as the reality of the war was held up against the Tel-Avivian-on-the-street, whose indifference, abuse – psychological, verbal, and sometimes physical, as they were spit upon – and disgust at the protestors was…so hard to see. The film begins with the protestors working on posters, and then an air raid siren goes off, and still chit-chatting, they head casually to the cement reinforced stairwell of the apartment building. And there was just something so WWII about it – but something not. My temperament and my brain chemistry don’t allow me to stare into the Abyss frequently – it’s always looking back – but…sometimes I wonder how long. How long can we possibly go on like this. How long it will be allowed – by anyone.

Russia’s abuse of Ukraine has been going on, intermittently, since the Second World War, making it currently Europe’s longest running war. Israel has been trying to eradicate Palestine for nearly that long. Myanmar, Sudan, Pakistan, and now this foolish aggression against Iran. How. Freaking. Long.

Year…Fiftysomething of the War

Constantly
resounding,
the sirens

scream, “air raid!
disaster!”
At some point

panic palls.
The bombs fall
anyway.