24/04/2026

Nothing must be uniform. Thinking about light on a dark day. Putting pen to paper in dark times. How frivolous! The lightness of paper meets the heft of ink. Marking the purity of it all to bring about light. Long enough to heave a sigh, a moment of relief followed by an endless wall that separates us from ourselves and divides from others. But the bird in the tree has not changed, neither has the bee on the flower, nor has the lamb sucking milk from its mother. They are all at peace with themselves and play their role in a precise food chain. And what about us? When will we start to think about how we can become more at peace with ourselves? Our very own internal wars lead to wars in the world at large.

I take a stroll in the forest. My peripatetic thinking is repetitive by nature.

Why do city-dwellers drive to the forest to be one with nature - having a picnic with supermarket food - and leave all their plastic waste and excrement behind? How can you lay your eyes on paradise and turn it into wasteland? How can you not feel an ounce of guilt?

Why do most people want to use anything and everyone to realise their own interests? Why must having more be better?

Why does your professional status matter so much when your status as a human being is so low? An ogre is more human than most humans. It is attested in a children’s story.

Why must we go on living just to prove ourselves?

Why must we all want to be part of a system that has long made us its slaves who are blind to the fact that we are indeed slaves.

Is there no longer any value to the beauty of nature, the slowness of a life lived to the full, must we clog on as machines do? And produce with no regard to our actual desires?

Must we stop seeing the green of the trees and the blue of the sky except for when we are on holiday? Must we value the “annual” holiday so much that we lose sight of the “normal” days?

If it’s sunny we complain of the heat. If it’s raining we lament the cold and grey skies.

Those living in the most bucolic settings grumble about the lack of employment and resources.

Those invisibly chained to the cities bleat about traffic, pollution, and urban chaos.

At any given time frame, what we don’t have seems to be the only thing we are after.

Millions of books are published; thousands of paintings are made. But what is it all for? So that someone can say, I am a published author, I am a recognised painter? Doing for the sake of going. So that someone can make money out of exploiting earth’s resources. Contemporary art and culture is a slave trade, an Ouroboros with any chance of consequent rebirth scoring zero. Just like the geo-political wars.

26th April 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Does that matter to anyone? When the ongoing global environmental and socio-political devastation doesn’t seem to bother anyone, why should a nuclear power station explosion that happened four decades ago matter now? But it does and it should!

Human memory is a sick thing. It will never heal to perform its purpose. It will lay bare, like a ghost, in the dark corners of the subconscious, to be outperformed by convenient ignorance.

When we are told about the past, we are only ever narrated the negatives. Wars, famines, injustice, inequality, massacres, racism, the lack of education and healthcare for all. Yes, doubtlessly there were a lot of “bad things” (as Donald Trump would say it, followed by pursed lips) that happened, but there were a lot of good things too. And I think we like to buy into the idea that our times are so much better, simply because that is what has been whispered into our ears for generations. After all, it is not that we have overcome all that was bad and now we live in some sort of Eden! Well, except those who believe in some kind of promised land that they’re owed! Please look up the etymology of the word, Eden.

I know you are reading this on a screen of some sort but for a moment, take your eyes off the screen. Look at the light, look at the green, look at the blue and the serene. Find that piece of nature on the pavement, that stray violet that grows out of the cement crack. Dig out the child-like excitement to cheer for it.

Look at yourself, look deep within yourself. Tear away that mask of self-consciousness that holds you back from being yourself. If putting your face on a screen, if putting a brand on your face makes you worthy, what happens when there’s no longer a screen or a brand? What will you become in the absence of what you have grown accustomed to? Will you forever go on seeking what you no longer have? Until amnesia is all that remains? This sounds awkwardly familiar.

Look at the beauty you have long let go. Seek your memories in old photographs. Remember that time you felt truly loved. It was a good thing to sit on your grandparent’s lap. It was a good thing to be kissed, hugged, caressed. It was a good thing to eat your meals with your family. It was a good thing to help wash up, a good thing to help your mother collect the laundry. It was a good thing to play on the street. It was a good thing to have little. It was a good thing to borrow a book and to go to a watch a film under the starry summer sky together with a hundred others. It was a good thing to idly watch the sea, to throw stones into the water, to fly a kite. It was a good thing to walk up a hill to the sound of cicadas and to the intoxicating perfume of jasmine stuffed into your first bra. It was a good thing to work hard so that your face tastes of salt. It was a good thing to fry the aubergines, to bubble away the tomato sauce, to unite them on a white plate and serve it on a starched linen tablecloth. It was a good thing to read an actual newspaper, the ink dying your fingertips, to feel its warmth, its crispness in the sun. It was a good thing to listen to the radio, to hear the concertos, the arias, the blues, and Parisian accordion. It was a good thing to break bread with your hands and use it as your spoon. It was a good thing to be alive then, and it’s a good thing to be alive now, if you can remember how to live. What’s bad will always remain, and what’s good will depend on you for survival. You are its bearer.

Try and remember the invisible and light horizon beyond your view. And acknowledge that the only thing that matters when you give your last breath is not how many things you have produced but how much kindness you have given to the world you live in.