Our heads we hang in shame

I know you want me to speak of my almost-bum injuries but I’m afraid I won’t just yet. I’ll talk abt something far more serious. October, October, it’s that sort of month, and we’ve only just begun.

Literally, we’ve only just begun – it’s the first day of Rosh Hashanah, our New Year [you can hear the Shofar here], full of possibilities and responsibilities. Judaism is nothing if not thorough and joy should be accompanied by introspection and evaluation. Nakedness. And this is October, that sort of month, the month that will increase my heartache so much I feel nauseated simply writing this, and I still haven’t emailed or rang Lila, and it’s coming, it IS coming and no amount of calling Israel beforehand will help me, whatamIgoingtodowhatamIgoingtodo, so, as much as I am trying to rejoice and feel hope, and as much as I've had a fabulous first day at the university, as much as I feel this year will be academically easier, I feel serious and sad and soul-heavy and buoyant in that very frightening way (the tiniest slip and you’re gone, you’ll float away and be gone forever).

I have spoken before of the resolute way we have inflicted our magnificence upon others, yes? [Oh it’s not all horrid, you must see their smiles. You will love it, I promise – as a bonus you will be able to see a truly raw post HTML-wise, I knew not what I was doing then. I have come a long way.]

So.

Let’s start with this, maybe:

Gorgeous, I know. It’s in Cape Verde, one of our former colonies. I’ve never been there but I want to visit. Capeverdeans are famous for their beauty, you may even be enjoying her music right now, the archipelago is famous for its beaches, and these gates?

Ahhh, through these gates you enter its famous concentration camp:

Sand macht frei, it would seem, and our political prisoners were in dire need of liberty, as established by our dictatorship and enforced by our secret police. This camp had an added bonus, The Frying Pan, so called because it did exactly that, see, it fried the men it held within its walls. Our government honoured them today.

You can see its entrance in the picture below.

One of the prisoners (the white man; the black men were also prisoners there but during the colonial war) describes it thus:

It was a concrete cell, a cube with an iron door, a little slit above, a concrete ceiling and no roof. It was an oven in this tropical climate.. It was suffocating… there were days when the temperature approached 45º/113º… We sweated all day long and had to be naked… At night it all condensed and fell on us like a shower…

He survived The Frying Pan for 70 days, setting an absolute record. He was encarecrated when he was 18 and spent 16 years in prison. His father was there with him. His mother, his father's wife? I don't know. How do you survive something like that? How do we survive, full stop? And I am abruptly left without anything else to add so I'll just say, without the slightest trace of irony or cynicism

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE

May this be an easy year to all of us, with nothing but gentle night ponies and fragrant flowers.

[Pics 1+2 from a blogspot Blogger, boneca*de*papel without the asterisks; the others taken from the net]