Suffering

I’m writing through the haze of jet-lag after eight hours worth of flights.

I left New York at 6:30pm. It just hit midday in Frankfurt. And I’ve had two hours sleep in economy.

International traveling is weird. As you fly, time is suspended. Swirling around you, but never gaining a footing. Then you arrive in what seems like an alternate universe, experiencing the affects of the journey but oddly detached from their cause. Is this what a black hole feels like?

Right now I am tempted to rouse Deutschland to throw a pity party due to my all-pervading feelings of crapness.

[Insert segue]

In these trivial things I can’t seem to shake the thought of those that suffer throughout the world daily through toil, hunger, and injustice.

Because tonight I will sleep.

And tomorrow I will eat.

Others don’t see an end in sight.

These troubles that weave their ways into our cotton-wool lives are but a passing apparition of the true suffering: a lack of recognition of one’s humanness and its associated rights. The simple reality that my complaints are formed from the freedom, opportunity and cash to travel proves how much of a dichotomy exists.

When I was in Washington D.C. I visited the US Holocaust Museum. It was shocking to engage with the reality of millions of Jews – women, men, children – murdered on mass for simply existing. Crammed into train carriages, lead to a slaughtering ground, and asphyxiated thousands at a time. And with them, the songs and stories and laughs and lectures joined the black hole.

Travel blogs asking the same questions as I don’t exist.

So what should be my response? And am I capable of carrying it out?

Why you haven’t heard from me

Currently I’m on a quarter-filled bus back to the land of opportunity, New York, after spending three days of crappy weather in Washington D.C. Coldplay’s Prospekt’s March EP serenades me through the gaunt, leafless trees as a pack of peanut M&M’s keeps me company by my seat. I admit, I thought for a moment about one friend’s decision to eat only Fair Trade chocolate, but ignored the conviction. Ignorance is a bliss that melts in your hand, not in your mouth.

Though you no doubt know I’m prone to procrastination, in some senses this feels like the first spare moment I’ve had to write here – that is, without the preference to eat, sleep or pen cluttered rants in a 1B5.

Every morning I experience this strange sensation where I arise, peel back the night’s protection and am compelled to venture out into a strange city in search of something fresh and new. To be honest, I feel kind of bad writing because any time spent resting is time not spent up atop a tall building, or watching a gorilla, or learning about the eugenical foundations to the Holocaust.

My tendency to ignore my duty to “E’s Motions”, my journal and poetry does have its ramifications: I am stuffed full of revelation but starved of reflection.

With each day comes a new set of questions, challenges, thoughts and feelings, not to mention it’s own unique experiences. And it truly deserves an exposition of its own. However, by the time the sun is pulled forward from my New York evening to a Wellington afternoon, I’m just too dusted to give anything to anyone, even myself.

I know I benefit from this expression, I just fail to put into practice disciplines that I know will develop me. Sound familiar? As a single 23-year-old floating across the seas of opportunity, any discipline would be beneficial right now.

Maybe I just need to take the bus more often.

Offices and tubes

Mondays are a killer. I wake at six, and after a shower and forcing food down my nocturnal self, I float three minutes to the Northern Line and find a seat in the tube. The littered carriages and ad cards above the tube maps weave into my dreams. As my night wrestles with my day, [...]

The illegal post. Harare, Zimbabwe

A sign outside a gas station reads “Petrol: yes. Diesel: yes.” It would be a punch-line in any other country, but in Harare it’s a fact of life.
I’m spending a day in the life of a Zimbabwean, and I’ve already had my first taste: power is off so no hot water for a shower. [...]