Ceasefire

I have read the comments on my last Blip and have appreciated your understanding. Blipfoto is a kind place. But I left something out. I failed to explain that my silence is not about taking time for self-care. I have water, housing, safety. The people I know and love are not being bombed. It’s not about me.

I simply cannot go on as if mass murder isn’t happening as I write this. 

Around 1400 people were killed in Israel on October 7: horribly, cruelly. Who can imagine a thousand faces? Since then, eight ten thousand killed in Gaza, more dying as I write these words, no one able to keep track of the numbers. Children. The almost-born, the just-born. Parents and grandparents. Queer people, dog-and-cat-lovers, cruel people, disabled people, gardeners and kind people just like you. 

As far as I know, those killed are no longer suffering. But the survivors: there were 2.3 million people in the Gaza strip on October 8. Now as water and food run out and only a few trucks of aid are allowed in, tens of thousands are wounded and in pain. All are grieving the deaths of people they knew and loved. For most, there is no water, food, medication, or medical help. 

Will no one stop this?

This journal is a bowed head. A tribute.

Respect for those who have died and those who grieve for them. Respect for those who wake and sleep in fear, who hunger and thirst. A silence.