Sunday, July 01, 2007

With a heavy heart

It's hard for me to write about human rights.

Maybe it's because I've seen dead people - just shot 20 minutes ago, blood pooling beneath the body like paint, no smell; just drowned, foaming at the nostrils, father performing a futile attempt at mouth to mouth resuscitation; found after an undetermined period of time, rolled in a carpet, body like an empty corn husk, nothing left but hair, teeth and bones; murdered family, following a trail of bloodstains that ends with their cold bodies dumped unceremoniously into stainless-steel tubs in a morgue.

It's hard for me, because while the current number of victims stands above 800, each tally is a name, a person, someone who lived and laughed and loved and died when they shouldn't have.

Kenneth quotes John Berger on his blog: "Truly we writers are the secretaries of death."

Death, death, death.

But I am still alive, and the work must continue.

2 comments:

Bryan Anthony the First said...

i echo virginia woolf: all writers are unhappy.

wala connect no?

woof!

ice said...

hmm, gagawan ko: are writers unhappy because of what they write about, or is it that too much introspection, coupled with a dreary world, can drive you to madness?