Reflections

– About Anger
– About a Faraway Pogrom
– About SilencesAbout Anger

When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking idly.

Sapo (610-580 BC)

About a Faraway Pogrom

At a faraway pogrom
His son was beheaded,
Of whom one night he told me,
“He was a gallant Absalom”.

Carlos M. Grünberg

About Silences

Silence is a right that, no doubt, everyone is entitled to. To keep silent is to keep a space to reflect outside the daily chatter, to express without words, to guard secrets, to attack by belittling, to exercise modesty and responsibility, to arrogantly believe that reason is with oneself, to cry for an offense, to cope with grief, as an act of generosity, as a mean look. Silence heals or sickens; purges away sorrow or is exercised to punish; it is an elevated expression or a sign of baseness. Generous silence and that other one, selfish silence.

Each one is indeed entitled to his or her own silences. They may contribute to the existential construction or open deplorable abysses; calm or deepen despair.
Silences come with mixed notes from senders and receivers. There are philosophical, religious, political, criminal, psychological silences. Spontaneous, inevitable, manipulative, caring, abetting silences. Fresh silences, calculated silences; silences of the soul and silences of the mind; the ones that generate love and those that deepen distances.

There are silences that are easy to keep because they spring up with joy and entail happiness; other silences corrode within and wrinkle our spirit. There are silences between non-speaking brothers and sisters, couples; silences that hurt. Silences kept with dignity entail the risk of bordering on punishment and retaliation; it is a path with inner thorns. Peaceful silences bring us neither closer nor apart; yet, they cleanse from within.

And then, there are the big silences; the silence of overwhelm, of the universe and nature speaking through our silences; the silence of cowardice and disloyalty; the silence of holocausts; of the killer and his prey; and the greatest one: the silence of indifference and shoulder-shrugging.

Roberto Sansón Mizrahi