The Dark Side Of The World

I am writing this in the early hours of the morning.

Last night, just after 11pm in Georgia, an innocent man was killed. He was black, of course. Born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Until the last moment (he was made to wait 20 years, brought close to execution 4 times and yesterday left a whole day before the deed was done) he maintained his innocence. For him at least, 20 years of torture is over.  The injection was administered quickly. In the words of the reporter, the executioners were 'professionals'.

And, along with other ghoulish details, we were told that the MacPhail family smiled when it was finished. They think they will now have peace.

How misguided is the advice they have been given. Peace does not come through revenge. Lest we forget, the MacPhail family are victims. They lost a beloved son, a brother, a husband. They lost someone they loved and still love, even in death, even after all these years.
How will this wound be staunched now that revenge is their's?
Perhaps it will come as a surprise to them, as the years roll by and their loss gets greater in the way these things do, that peace becomes even more elusive? No matter. Those who counselled and steered the MacPhail family towards the argument of the death penalty do not have their best interest at heart. For when all the vote chasing and the simplistic rhetoric is over, loss is only healed by love. The murder of an innocent man cannot be equated by the murder of another innocent. All that will be achieved is the sullying of Mark MacPhail's memory, a man who was merely helping a homeless man at the time of his death.

But now it is all over no one will be following his family through the long dark journey that will be the rest of their life. No one will offer them another blueprint for living with the loss that remains their loss only. Because frankly, no one will care about them much, now.
Not the Savannah District Atorney, Larry Chisolm.
Not the local judge Penny Haas Freesemann.
Not Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal, nor anyone who might have stopped this medieval execution.
The MacPhail family, vulnerable statistics and victims themselves, although they do not know it yet, have been betrayed twice by the State of Georgia.

And as for this little tribe, the Georgia State Board, what of them? Yesterday Amnesty International said,
'Should Troy Davis be executed, Georgia may well have executed an innocent man and in so doing discredited the justice system.'

Well, Georgia has achieved its objective and now will withdraw back into its alien way of life. No vigils will be held across the world for any of them. But America what of you? Once known for your charm and your friendliness; once thought of as world liberators, as the first to give us a glimpse of ourselves suspended in space.
What is it like now, for you, living on the dark side of the world?

Sons of the Motherland

'How far that little candle throws his beams!'
 (Photograph taken outside the American Embassy in London on the night of Troy Davis's death.)

Happy Feet. Summer 2011's visual project

 As promised here is a small selection, although the summer does seems a long time ago and I have moved on to another project...more of which to follow. But thanks for your witty contributions and I'm sorry, due to my slim grasp of new media, I couldn't access the others.

Goldengrove Unleaving?

These are the last days of August. The sun, having burned its way across the hillside, is suddenly gentler in early morning and there is mist for the first time in the valley below.

For weeks we have struggled with searing temperatures. Keeping cool has been our main preoccupation and the shuttered bedrooms with their terrazzo marble floors have been wonderfully welcoming at siesta time. Small slivers of light fall on the darkened walls and in the stillness the noise of cicadas become magnified. What can be lovelier than falling asleep to such a sound? Sleep itself is blissful, light, trouble free.

Tonight there is to be a festa in the square and each family has been asked to bring a dish of food. I have been asked to bring a dolce.
'Apple pie,' someone shouts. 'English apple pie!'
Everyone laughs.

In late afternoon we decide to walk down to the river but even at four o' clock the heat remains
impossible and climbing the hill is a painful business. Like walking in the path of a ferocious fan heater. The sky is defiant and cloudless. 

'There will be no rain,' is written across it.

At the top of the hill we begin a sideways descent towards the river. The road here is what they call 'strada bianca' rough, and full of stones. On either side are small uncut meadows retaining the light like a muslin strainer.

The olive trees shimmer and one small dusty viper ripples past us, oblivious to or uninterested in our presence. The flat sound of a goat bell out of sight is followed almost instantly by a glint of water far down below.
We enter the copice wood, filled now with the first autumn crocuses, pale and white in the shadows, vulgarly magenta in the sun. It is almost impossible to follow the path without treading on them.

And then, with a last scramble we are down by the water's edge. And the whole place is ours. There are five of us so we spread out, each in search of different things, different rocks, different patches of light and shade. After the fan heater experience of a moment ago the water, when we plunge our feet into it, is breathtakingly cold … for a moment, at least. And then we are in it, even those of us afraid of possible water snakes (of which, of course, there are none!) And the heat and the dust and the struggle of keeping cool all through these weeks are washed away in the bluish light falling on the tumble and rub of wet river stones.

Later on we sit on huge boulders, giant human lizards, drying out in the sun, enjoying it as we have not dared all day. Lemon-green light filters down through holm oak, water boatmen, designed surely by Leonardo da Vinci's hand cross a small pool.

Butterflies, almost exactly the colour of the rocks, stream endlessly through the air. I sit and stare, dazzled. Where has the summer gone? I was one sort of person when we arrived and now I am another. If we had appreciated it more might it have lasted a little longer?

There is a small electronic click as  a photograph is taken.
'It isn't over yet,' someone shouts above the roar of water.
'Not yet, not yet,' replies the echo.

Ah! But the signs of autumn are already in the air. Silver coins of leaves flutter down in airy flurry and in any case today there are no longer any children here. On the way down we passed several small lorries delivering  wood for the autumn fires ahead.

No, the summer is over, in all but name. We've been told it has been raining and raining in England.  Soon the rains will come here, too, and the river will swell and rush dangerously on its journey to the sea. Then the wood itself will become moist and dank, providing that perfect environment for the peculiar scented local mushroom. Pasta al fungi will be served in all the restaurants. And the autumn crocuses will die away leaving only berries.
In this part of the world, time passes visibly. Is this part of the pleasure of living in the countryside? What joy there is in watching the small changes taking place in nature, knowing it will be just as it was, last year, and as it will be, next.
Once, thousands of years before, in the ice age of human imagination, our river would have cut this valley. Our river! Ours for a few short hours of idleness....

I notice clusters of minute black frogs around the water's edge desperately clinging to existence while all around in the golden light, life struggles on, unnoticed. Yes, the summer is almost over and once again, as happens each year, I am changed by it. Isn't that why we come to this lovely valley? To remind ourselves once more what Hopkin's Margaret, discovered?

'Margaret are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?....
It is the blight man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for.'

Overhead a plane glides across the smooth-blue sky heading for the Middle East. Libya, perhaps. In two days I too will be on one. Following the North star, home.