Sketch a day - Day 203/365

Today I wrote to my MP about Gaza. I couldn't concentrate on the play because it's reached a stage of such horror there.

So I gave up and just wrote everything I could think of.

There is no time left. There will be noone left to save if the world doesn't find a way to break this blockade within days. Hours.

It wasn't a great letter. It spiralled and bulged. Lost focus. Became overly emotional, I think. Probably. But it doesn't really matter. The quality is the least of it. The volume of letters hitting the inbox I suspect is what counts now.

Do write to your MP, if you can. It might feel hopeless, but we won't know unless we try.

It feels impossible that we are living in this moment. Never again is here. I think of my mum and dad’s memories of growing up during the 2nd world war. My mum was a child at a boarding school that was bombed regularly. She never forgot the terror she felt, in the school shelter. I think of her when I see pictures of Palestinian children being bombed. It is barbaric to do that to a child.

My mum never forgot the young girl who (she discovered some years later was Jewish, and had been placed in the school under a false name by parents who were in Europe. They had sent their child to England alone, to try and save her). Every evening that little girl listened to a radio, trying to. hide her terror..My mum.noticed it but didn't understand where it was coming from then. Only later, as an adult, my mum understood what that girl understood as a child, but had been told to hide, even from her classmates. My mum was haunted by that. That girl knew that the Nazis were doing unspeakable things. She was surrounded by children who were scared but who didn't know the half of it. Because we cant imagine the unspeakable unless it has been spoken or witnessed.

And here we are again. Never again. Here it is. How simple it has all been. It turns out killing and killing and killing and killing is entirely doable, if a resourced nation really sets it's mind and army to it.

I should also say that today I saw some extraordinary footage on insta - young Israeli teenagers burning their IDF draft papers and refusing to enact this genocide. I am truly amazed by their bravery. I doubt I would have their courage.

I think about the IDF soldiers almost as much as I think about the Palestinians. I feel incredible sorrow for all the children and young people swimming in the offel of this moment. Palestinian and Israeli. If they survive, how will they ever return from this grotesque moment in their lives? Imagine being 20 and having done the things the IDF soldiers have been ordered to do. The Israeli leaders have betrayed their own children and children's children. They have led them into an ocean of murder and shame and destruction. Its so vile.

After writing to my MP, I went back to my play. The pages done later this afternoon were not good. I expect I will have to throw them out tomorrow.

The walk I took with Tucker this afternoon was however beautiful. A stark reminder that the world is everything all at once. We stopped to watch the bullocks drinking from the canal.

It was a moment of clear cool stillness. A moment of remembering life is always coming ready or not.

Tomorrow, we go again.

And that's the news.