Ranting
There are days when I just want to scream and lop other people’s heads. I am a perfectionist (when it comes to my own work) and I work fast. I try not to demand the same standards from other people, but holy heck, sometimes I am. Just. Pissed. Off. when they’re slow and yet they keep complaining about this and that.
Anyways. Must not expect the same standards from other people.
An old boyfriend used to chide me about my former habit of getting annoyed when other people don’t submit on time; or when they fail totally to meet deadlines by at least week.
"They can’t write as quick as you. It’s not a crime."
Okay, okay. Aaaaaargh. I am so used to writing under pressure that I am capable of writing a full-length feature article in an hour (provided that I’ve done all the research and have all the interviews). In congress, I used to write privileged speeches within 30 minutes - three page, single-spaced speeches. My fingers would be flying all over the keyboard and in my overactive imagination, they’d send up sparks.
When I was a child of around six or seven, I was brought to the doctor because I kept getting headaches. The doctor said that my brain worked too fast (and so I talked too fast and I wrote too fast and I felt about things too deeply and I thought about things to much) and I. Should. Slow.Down.
So my parents tried to get me to take swimming lessons. And encouraged me to run. And to generally stay outdoors and not spend too much time reading or moping in my room with my dolls (whom I dressed in my own clothes; or for whom I tried to sew clothes nevermind that my stitches were crooked and I pricked my fingers so many times they looked like pincushions).
Now, well, gad. I still write fast and I still think fast and I still feel much too deeply about things and when I get upset it’s fucking hell.
I am so glad I don’t have work tomorrow and I can spend some time outside and get some sun and some air and hopefully some perspective. On this particular day I am taking no blame and I am admitting no shame I am fucking blaming other people. Like my friend Elias used to tell me and Novaleeh — the world owes me a favor and hell if I’m not going to collect.
Hell is often other people.
Anyways.
If I felt really perverse, I will just wait for payday (the beginning of every month), cash in my check and get the heck out of Hong Kong. But then that would mean leaving this paper in the lurch and it would be so sayang for the mass movement here, for UNIFIL and the Kasamas because this paper is almost as good as Pinoy Weekly almost but but not quite but good enough I think because I am certainly not ashamed of it and I for a change can now admit that I am a little proud of myself writing and doing the lay-out and editing and generally not freaking out with all the people I work with when I think they can certainly up the ante on the quality of their work.
So there.
I just need to hit the beach and soak up some sun but of course not the UV rays and I am going to need a hat and sunblock and a towel big enough to lie on and I won’t swim because I don’t feel like swimming I just want to stare at the ocean and see it change color from blue to green to blue again and the way the sunlight hits the water is so beautiful because there are little sparkles and I will breathe deeply and maybe, hopefully, I. Will. Feel. Less. Pissed. Off.
It’s hell trying to be myself and an activist with certain beliefs and principles and values and yes, dare I say, morals at the same time. Sometimes the Ina who is just Me and the Ina who’s supposed to be, well, an activist are at loggerheads with each other.
Sometimes I just want to tell everyone who pisses me off to just get the fuck away and don’t you dare speak to me. Stuff your stupid freaking views and horrible little opinions and beliefs down your wretched throat.
But I don’t. So instead I write all these letters all these manifestos explaining why I am offended and why I think the other person is a jackass (of course I don’t actually write that they’re jackasses but still) and I admit my faults if I have any and I can eat humble pie without choking but I do not keep my anger and frustration bottled up because I simply can’t it will give me headaches and migraines and I will not be able to eat and sleep properly and I can’t even eat and sleep properly the way I am already so hence this rant.
There. I feel much better.
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I am currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ and I am again being eaten up by envy. It’s so alive and incredibly funny and extremely interesting in the sense that the book is written from the point of view of a precocious 9-year old who lost his dad in 9/11. When Oskar Schell (the little boy) is upset he says ‘I bruised myself again’ and when he’s sad he says "I had heavy boots about it.’
How apt. To be hurt is to bruise, and to feel weighted down by feelings of sadness or anger or disappointment whether over one’s self or because of other people is, well, to feel like one is walking around in lead-encased footwear.
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I’ve argued with my closest friend here Raymond so often about Israel and Palestine and Lebanon that we had to call to a truce and promised to avoid the topic because it’s too bloody. He’s pro-Palestine, but he has some things to say about Hezbollah and Syria and how the leaders of the liberation movements against Zionism failed (according to him) to strengthen their own countries first and the fighting capability of their respective people that etc etc so well, white flag waving in the breeze.
So there. Am reading the books of a young Jewish author (he’s my age) and he writes about Jewish traditions and the impact of the Holocaust and diaspora on the Jewish people etc etc but now, here, now in present time it’s his people who are making refugees of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, destroying another civilization and setting back another country and people some minimum 50 years back.
How’s that bruising yourself? How’s that for wearing heavy boots?
I wonder if Jonathan will ever write about Palestine and how Israel and the US connived to steal the land from the other Middle Eastern people and established Israel.
Or what Israel is now doing to Lebanon.
Anyways.
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One in five Lebanese is now a refugee
By Ferry Biedermann in Sidon
Published: July 25 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 25 2006 03:00
The old Lebanese port city of Sidon is bursting at the seams with refugees from the Israeli onslaught against Hizbollah in the south.
Schools, public buildings and private apartments are filled to capacity. Next will be the mosques, a miracle of sectarian goodwill as the local Sunni mufti has agreed to open the places of prayer to the overwhelmingly Shia refugees.
Mayor Abdul Rahman Bizri has set up a command centre at city hall to deal with the human tide that threatens to overwhelm his city. Sidon now hosts 40,000 refugees from the south, he says. It is the highest concentration outside the capital Beirut and a relatively much heavier burden on the population of 100,000.
"I don’t get depressed until late at night before I go to sleep. Then I have time to think that maybe another 4,000 or 5,000 people will come," says Mr Bizri. Hisbig worry is an Israeli assault on the city of Tyre, further south, where 10,000 refugees have congregated. Sidon is 43km south ofBeirut and halfway between Tyre and Beirut.
At least half a million people, about a fifth of the population, have been displaced by the violence. South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut have been hit the heaviest in the 13 days of fighting.
Most of the displaced complain about being targeted as civilians but some reveal that there were fighters in their villages. During the weekend another surge of refugees fled the south, heeding Israeli warnings to get out of the way of the fighting and adding to the strain on resources.
The humanitarian situation has been made worse by an Israeli sea and air blockade and the targeting of roads and bridges that hinder the distribution of aid, both to the refugees and to the people who have stayed behind.
The UN has now established a humanitarian corridor to Beirut and hopes to get Israeli agreement for convoys further into the country later this week, said relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland in Beirut. He launched an emergency appeal for $150m for Lebanon, "to meet the needs of some 800,000 people over the next three months".
The main highway between Sidon and Beirut was made impassable by missile damage on the first day of hostilities. A car ride that used to take 20 minutes on the modern coastal highway now takes almost two hours along winding mountain roads.
Food is not a big problem for now but there are looming shortages of medicines for chronic illnesses and hospitals are starting to get worried about primary care drugs such as painkillers and antibiotics while they have to care for an influx of wounded from the south.
The refugees who make it to Sidon are exhausted by the long and stressful journey. Their stories are often similar and tell of days of Israeli shelling, shortages of water and food, power outages and cut phone lines.
The village of Aytaroun, right up against the border with Israel, has set up an office in Sidon city hall to help families reunite and co-ordinate relief. Of its 5,600 population, 4,100 have left. At least two families, one of 10 people, were killed when their houses were hit by shelling.
Haidar Mawassi, a farmer from Aytaroun, says that he, his wife and his eight children had to walk for kilometres on end to flee the village and they saw death and destruction, including "corpses", on their way out. But it was worth it because "for the last four days we could only give the children one dry biscuit a day."
Many also recount how they were first told by Israel to leave, only to be hit by Israeli shelling on the road to safety.
But one Shia woman who left the village of Srifa, where at least 10 people were killed in air raids last week, says that she and many other people were angry with Hizbollah’s tactics. "The Israelis had spies and the moment a Hizbollah fighter would enter a house, it would get hit. They also hit a school where Hizbollah had made a base."
From a nearby hilltop, Hizbollah fired rockets at Israel. "Of course that is not good. I lost my house," she says.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
