Sounds of Utopia

Thoughts are boiling in my head. My head is a boiling pot of water. The pot has nearly melted but returns to its original state every time. Everything here is as strange as the strangeness of not knowing your own feelings. I wake up every day to the sounds of Utopia. I put on my shoes and head to work. I see two little girls doing the same thing every day to each other. Things they would not know how to do if they had not seen adults do them. I go to work, then to charge my phone, then I go back to the tent. I sleep, and I wake up, and I see the girls, and I hear people speak about their beliefs and doctrines and all that is related to them. I listen to their analysis of when the ceasefire will happen. 

The tent is very cold, but tears take the edge off. I hear people breathing heavily due to a virus that is spreading. A virus that makes it hard to breathe. They suffer as if they really know what is happening to them. The coughing is constant, and noses drip continuously. As a type of resistance, small tissue packets are sold in the market for $5. 

I woke up a little while ago to the sounds of bombs falling nearby. The smell of gunpowder choking us. The fear is gone, and when I aak myself where it is, why all this is happening, these words come to me over and over: "Death only begets death. God is just. Blood is not forgotten, and the executioner does not escape. God is just. Venegence is just. And fire lies between us."

Utopia is the tent next to mine in which lives a school teacher who says she is a mother to generations. I hear her teaching her kids and the kids of the camp 'morals' in a way that makes a mockery of the children. She has a 15 year old son who does anything she wants. Carries the water, cleans the tent, and buys her whatever she needs. If he makes a silly mistake, she screams: "May God burn you alive!". 

She has a daughter who is 13. She cares for the newborn, cooks, and does the laundry. And when she makes a mistake, she is beaten with a whip. Att night, I hear her cries, and so does everyone else in the camp. The teacher has a sister. Also in the same camp. She was beaten so often in childhood that she lost part of her mind. We hear her mother beat her at night. Last night, the teacher was beating her daughter, and her mother was beating the teacher's sister at the same time.

They have inherited beating until someone loses part of their mind and starts blithering to themselves. The father watches on in silence. His  main concern is not hearing loud noises. The next day, I hear the father say to his son: "I didn't like the way you spoke to your mother." These words wake me up, and I say loudly: "I have found Utopia!". My mother lets out a loud laugh. 

The educational system has left an inheritance of "spare the rod, spoil the child." Values are taught by rote, enforced, but not lived or embodied. Learning requires mercy, and mercy makes learning fertile soil for regeneration.