What we talk about when we talk about war

My maternal grandfather rarely talked about the war. He was sent out soon after he had married my grandmother. They had just turned nineteen. The years many of us spend getting an education and having fun while at it he spent fighting WW2. He came back a decorated hero who never took out those medals and seldom talked about how he’d earned them. On the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II a local historian/documentarist wanted to interview him. Even fifty years was not time and distance enough. He declined. By then I could hear what he couldn’t voice; he had seen and experienced more than most of us could handle without losing our sanity.

Strategy, tactics and targets. Strikes, counterstrikes, combat. Invasion and occupation. Soldiers and civilians. Casualties and collateral damage. Valor, heroes, sacrifice. This is the clinical dialect of the language of violence. Devoid of human emotion and the atrocious cost of war. The euphemisms we use, talking in numbers and abstracts, creates the distance we need. It eases the conscience and helps silence objections. We have no choice. This is the price we have to pay.

That choice has consequences, and the price is brutal. Death, carnage, bodies, graves, amputations, disability, pain, fear, fury, terror, shock, trauma, retribution, grief, displacement, squalor. These words should climb to the top of the lexicon. They should fuel our resistance by highlighting the true meaning of war. These are the words I think of when I think of my grandfather’s experience. These are the words I think of when I think about the very real chance that my sons will one day have to go against the madman in Moscow. No mother wants to contemplate that. Not this one. Not a single one.

Do electric sheep dream of pixel grass?

Temperature: A cloudy -2/28.5 degrees, and what do you know, more snow! That’s actually perfect for this week, we’re taking a couple of days off.

Drinking: Still no Harney in sight. Damn.

Eating: Semla buns, the kind Scandinavians usually have on Shrove Tuesday (no pancakes on Mardi Gras up north, dearest denizens), but since that is still a week away, and because it’s sportlov (winter break) week for our youngest, semlor after a hearty outing it will be. But almond paste or jam with all that cream? That is the eternal dilemma up here. I’m a jam girl, strawberry, please, that paste is too sticky and sweet.

Watching: Fi-nal-ly got to see the new Matrix on the big-screen. (They closed the cinemas for a bit when Omicron hit.) And if you didn’t watch it until the very end, you need to go back and watch it again. Yes, I know it’s on HBO Max. No, it’s not the same. Okay, sure, that’s subjective. (But you're wrong. *cheeky grin*) And how gloomy and menacing does The Batman look, hmm? Paul Dano, Zoë Kravitz, Andy Serkis, yes, please. And then for something completely different: the new Downton Abbey movie, can’t wait! Oh, cinema how I’ve missed you.

Listening: to the bizarre victimization of one Vladimir Putin. Okay, you’re the man with the plan. Yes, you believe you can get away with everything from murder to military occupation. No, that will not make you or Russia great now, in the future, in retrospect, or in any other timeline or reality but the one you have in your head. You are going about it all wrong, as in horrendously off the charts off-course. How did Agent Orange put it? Sad!

Reading: J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World; impatiently waiting for Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility; and Atwood’s Burning Questions collection! Doesn’t matter if we’ve read them all before, they bear repeating, repeatedly.

Writing: Hey, it’s Twosday, 22.02.2022, a palindrome date!

Thinking: Thoughts are a means of organizing and analyzing reality but they are not reality itself, are they? And yet thoughts have always been used to make up and reorient and distort reality, haven’t they? And our thoughts are up for grabs, aren’t they, bidders competing for our attention, our favor, our rage, our love. But on a scale from ambitious sociopath to homicidal psychopath, how callous is he though? How much does the world have to take to satisfy one man’s obsession? Purely rhetorical question, the world has had to take a great many things to satisfy some man’s ambition. And where are those men? Dead and gone. How are they remembered? Despised by most, deities to a deluded few. All for nothing then. All that misery and destruction so that you could patch up some real or imagined slight and feel all-powerful for two minutes. What a waste of resources, human, financial, material. At a time when we don’t have time for your fixations. You should have taken up meditation instead. Or worked on your Turkish get-up. Taken a walk in a park or forest and stared infinity in the face and admitted that you came into this world the same way as everyone else and one day you will leave just like everyone else and in between you had the luxury of making choices.

Feeling: combative in that sweet and fierce way that makes for a great workout. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a date with a kettlebell. Perfect the Turkish get-up and rule the world.

My heart is ever at your service

 Tender Valentine's, sweetie darlings. 💋

Stronger together indeed

Temperature: 37.5/99.5 degrees, a low-grade fever then. Outside, -5/23 degrees with snow and some more snow on the way. Not complaining, this is infinitely better than the slush that’s ever more prevalent.

Drinking: Can someone send me some Harney & Sons? Emerald Isles, please. Or just some Citrus Green. Cherry Blossom? Pointless, costly, ill-advised Brexit.

Eating: I don’t feel like eating, I feel like putting the kettle on and burrowing under the covers.

Watching: Is anyone genuinely excited about the Olympics? It must be super stressful for the athletes to be monitored so closely, and to have to fear a positive PCR test, all your hard work going to waste, then having to give your life over to local authorities. Happy Lunar New Year all the same. Year of the tiger, I hear. Chloe the cat approves.

Listening: to this year’s enredos and Scandinavian Eurovision hopefuls. There’s always something fun and surprising in there.

Reading: QualityLand by Marc-Uwe Kling, available in several languages.

Writing: in the epistolary form is not dead, Vladimir Vladimirovich has been busy at it to everyone’s apprehension and annoyance, which is always the point, but do write back to tell him that no one is coming at you, just check your borders, and then let’s see where the buildup is.

Thinking: Pointless, costly, ill-advised. See above.

Feeling: under the weather. There is no escaping a winter cold, you have got to catch one at least once. #TGIF