Another letter from Tel Aviv

Before I fall asleep at night, thoughts pass through my mind until “sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care/”. In the past few years, these thoughts have focused on Montreal winters, summer jobs I had, lost love, my Dad, and the roller-coaster of my life, for indeed, my life has been far from routine.

Ever since the virus has erupted, different and less personal thoughts find their way into my rambling thoughts before I slip away for the night.

For example, what was it like listening to propaganda in a fascist or communist state? Being exposed to Goebbels’ vile rubbish or reading Streicher’s shitty, shameless, vile rag? Or getting the news from Pravda? Or gulping up then-Peking’s Ren Min Ri Bao? How long did/does it take to inculcate nonsense, hatred, or stupidity into someone’s head?

Another example, if liberty and freedom are such key values why is it so easy to shut people up in their homes? Why are those guilty of under spending on health care the same people locking us up at home and shoving fear down our throat? How did we cave in so easily?

I have no answers to these questions. However I do hope things will change. Unlike Bernie Sanders who after a heart attack wants to be president, I want to spend my remaining years doing the things I love-but I do hope change will come from those, younger than me, who will not succumb to tyranny on steroids, powered by smartphones.

During the day, other thoughts occupy my mind after I have walked George, exercised, read, blogged and spoken to friends, After all, it’s only 11 AM. What has happened to the voice of expertise, which is totally overwhelmed by social media? Where is the voice of dissent which could be saying, “there is a very nasty virus going around, keep your distance and wash your hands”, allowing life to continue? Is death so taboo that we need lock everyone up? Where the fuck is common sense? Maybe I am the crazy one? “Allonchik, you always look at everything differently; that’s why you married me”, claimed my late wife Hadassah.

Yes, she called me Allonchik-a diminutive of Allon, although I am anything but small.

There will be time. There will be time.  There will be time. Time when I will not agree to be locked up in a cage by people who are “caring for my wellbeing” by denying me my basic freedom. But in the meantime, I stay indoors.

I feel like Hans Falada-a stranger in my own land.

 

 

 

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8 thoughts on “Another letter from Tel Aviv

  1. Well, I am reading this at 4:28 AM in Ottawa and glad I did. I can now finally go to sleep.
    Thanks, Alonichka

  2. I am keeping you and everyone else in my thoughts. I am so grateful to you and your thought and caring processes. The voices are out there quietly and slowly making their way to the conscious level. these voices start small and build. I think of Gandhi in India in the 1930’s and 40’s . The British and the world kept laughing until they could no longer laugh. Perhaps that energy still exists and is becoming active again. I hope there fore I am I think therefore I am I love therefore I am.

    The very best to you as always
    Sylvechka

  3. Allon,

    Man! you hit some nerves with this letter!

    I am reminded of this:

    “Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

    I am right there with you. I am so distraught at how so many with power are using that power as a variant of using OPM – using Other People’s Money. Instead of OPM, they play OPP, Other Peoples Power; Liberty being one expression or feature of personal power. So, these muckety-mucks are taking the power granted by those they ostensibly serve to feed their own egos to wield power over those they are supposed to serve. The sick thing about it is that they mask it with “caring for you”

    The incredible elephant in the room is we are talking about the fucking flu – the FUCKING FLU! It is a variant, true. But every flu season new variants emerge – some with so little impact or so indistinguishable from other variations they are overlooked.

    the damage being done now is NOT caused by THE FLU. It is caused by people playing OPP games.

    I am glad you speak to this and provide this place for me to vent. I thought I was alone in seeing the ugly truth of the power game that is being played over a FUCKING MICROSCOPIC VIRUS.

    Cordially,

    Ed
    Drive On!

  4. If your liberty involves being able to demand (request?) health care because your invisible virus has gone into pneumonia and your lungs are filling up and there is no room in the hospital because others are there before you and you have the Lt. Gov of Texas, Dan Patrick, saying that “old people over 70” should be willing to die so the economy can drag itself up again to serve the millennials and younger folks who will supposedly survive this flu that only affects old people and in yesterday’s news you read that a 22 year old football player at a western US university was found dead in his apartment having the night before told someone he was having breathing problems and I have a brother younger than me in assisted living with a terribly compromised physique who may die from this and I will not be able to go to his funeral …. the whole thing is unnerving to me … the uncertainty of it … how we don’t listen to experts and scientists in the good times (or such listening is in short supply here in the US) to say nothing of the bad times. We have no “vaccine” for this one … last fall’s flu shot is not going to work for me, and the hospital will surely not work for me if New York state is any example. All of this makes it different for me. And it may not make it different for you. But it makes it different for me. The precautionary principle in health care — first do no harm — is my mantra now. I am not going to any corona virus parties as some young’uns in the US did recently and then one party-er found out he had the coronavirus. Like you, Allon, I am staying put … though perhaps for different reasons. In one of the New Testament letters to the Christian churches the author suggests that it is difficult for one to be willing to die (as Jesus was) even for a single good person. I am not ready to be told that I should be ready to die … even if I am not an elder yet. Where is the liberty for me in someone even suggesting it?

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