We build and we break down and we throw ourselves to the dirt. For those children of this new millennia, unfortunately, this is nothing new. Even those abstracted from it haven't yet to know a time without the sound of drums. It's Thursday, the 24th of February. Word is smoke over Odessa. Smoke over Kyiv. We've seen video of the jets. Tanks left to burn in Kharkiv. Soon they'll have the tallies, the speeches, and declarations. We've seen it and we know.
How to write of war, in war? It disallows any romantic touch. There is fog but it is not that fog; Friedrich standing above with a hand on the hilt of his cane. War denies contemplation. It happens too quickly. It does not allow for cleverness because cleverness requires time. Any excess use of time will be met with suspicion. Implicit thought being, how many have been shot in the time it took to craft a phrase. Still, writers must go to work. Nothing can be hidden beneath their prevailing light.
I lay on the ground, the innards of the crushed bird trickling down the side of my face. They trickled, winding and dribbling, down my cheek, blinding me. The dove's tender entrails slithered over my forehead, and I closed my uncaked eye so that I would not see the world unravel before me. This world was small and ugly. A pebble lay in front of my eyes, a pebble dented like the face of an old woman with a large jaw. A piece of string lay near it and a clump of feathers, still breathing. My world was small and ugly. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't see it, and pressed myself against the earth that lay soothing and mute beneath me."
from 'The Story Of My Dovecote' by Isaac Babel
What we know, soldiers are moving in. Helicopters have been seen with rotors spun out on the grass. Ukraine has declared its sovereignty. They are willing to fight. How that fight will occur is not totally clear. Some have said the navy was destroyed at Odessa. Poland is on alert. The West will almost certainly be looking to respond, what that response will be is not clear. Could there be any response that won't be thought of as underwhelming or unsatisfying, including war for war?
At every blow of the battering ram
stars without eyes rain down,
new wounds in the last supper,
the unfinished mist on the wall.
from 'The Last Supper' by Osip Mandelstam
translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin
What absolves will be witness. It is that clearing agent which cleans like soap over a dirty plate. The difficulty of witness is that it also takes time, and it does not protect from the wounds it knows to be real. Which, in a broader sense, is a tragedy of life. We can never fully protect ourselves. As the most ardent Stoics might suggest, we cannot resist completely the slow-driving suffering that exists in a mortal existence.
War is well canonized in literature. Those excerpts which stand out as the most capable and precise representatives, in our minds, do as little of their own talking as possible. And why would they? There is nothing more expressive than the raw visage of life. War risks the unreal, the uncanny, to look into the face of another and see nothing. So the writer commits to working with only that which is most real.
Because even in blissful death I fear
to lose the clangor of the Black Marias,
to lose the banging of that odious gate
and the old crone howling like a wounded beast.
And from my motionless bronze-lidded sockets
may the melting snow, like teardrops, slowly trickle,
and a prison dove coo somewhere, over and over,
as the ships sail softly down the Flowing Neva.
-March 1940
from 'Requiem' by Anna Akhmatova
translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
Tips for living: go outside, breathe, exist. Go for a run. Find a place to be alone and sing loudly to yourself. Quick enough that you lose your breath. Slow down then go again. Eat with friends. Drink wine or fresh-squeezed juice. Dance with someone you find attractive. Be generous with your mercy. Do not shame someone for simple failures. The most effective protest for death is the performance of one's life. If necessary, engage in something banal. This is an excellent cure for hyperbole, which we have an excess supply of in our current times. Be safe. Be aware.