How Do You Write When in Pain? What Do You Write At A Distance?
Chronic writer's block because of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
I meant to write every week and post my stories every Sunday. I meant to write something else, too. I was about to write about a cute, random act of kindness that happened to me. But a new war— the latest of 40 ongoing wars in the world, 2021-2022— has begun just last week on the 24th of February and it’s left me stunted.
It seems as though it was only a week ago when we were worrying and doing what we can about the Israel-Palestinian conflict (still ongoing). And the Black Lives Matter movement (still ongoing). And now, on top of it all, we now have Russia’s plans. So much suffering.
I read a tweet a few days ago saying they’re tired of living through history. But the more we learn, the more we realize that these events— the famines, the poverties, the plagues, the wars and recessions— they never actually left. There’s never been a period of peace since civilization started.
I’m learning more and more about this new war’s genesis. I’m learning about NATO and Putin’s intent. I’m learning about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s admirable courses of action as he’s shepherding his country and his people through. I’m learning about sanctions and the politics of it all. I’m learning about how “white” wars have a faster response than wars with brown and black people. Most of all, I’m learning that these are all the doings of arrogant men with too much power and that it is always the poor and the innocent who suffers. Always the poor and the innocent who suffer.
These that we call “major events” always leave me at an impasse. It happened at the start of the pandemic when one can feel the depression of people in the air. It’s happening again. It makes my mind edge trough the borders of philosophy and it leaves me asking: What is my role in all of this? How do I make sense of all of this?
To be clear, I am not within a scope of a sniper or within the range of Russian missiles. I am too far away and safe, Thank God. That joke of Anthony Jeselnik’s in Thoughts and Prayers is a life lesson for me. I must be careful with my writing that I should not be at the center and that my intentions are true.
But I am Ada Monroe in Cold Mountain, heartbroken, and who “began by counting the days, then the months. I don’t count on anything anymore.” I am Master Yoda who upon the execution of Order 66 clutched his chest when he felt the deaths of his fellow Jedi. And one way or another, “this war, this awful war, will have changed us both beyond all reckoning.”
When I worked in Dubai, it always marveled me that I could just enter a mall without my bags being checked for weapons. In the Philippines, guards constantly poke your bags and your person. Packages get scanned through machines, like in airports. This is because of our history with bombings.
The Philippine South is the region in the country where battles still exist until today. My city has experienced two battles and several bombings and that was part of my childhood. I watched a mosque get blown to bits as a maid served tea. My high school classmates and I— young, innocent, and stupid as we were— once concluded that the safest days in our city were the three or four days after a bombing took place. My friends and I enjoyed our merienda in a mall with shattered windows and debris on pavements. And my mother, during the city crisis of 2013, calmly greeted good afternoon to a rebel with a rifle strapped on him. This has been our normal.
Through age and experience, I began to be more aware and I realize how some parts of my childhood have been stripped because of the bloodshed and battles. And now I am seeing this again, albeit from another country.
It’s a different kind of pain. I get to wake up, exercise, worry about mundane things. I get to manage the store and reprimand the boys who I work with if they play too much mobile games while at work. And at the same time, fathers are kissing their daughters on trains, not knowing if they will be alive and see each other again. I feel as though I’m constantly driving through a very rocky, very muddy road, always braking and inching through.
I couldn’t write. I couldn’t write until I could. And then I couldn’t again. Susan Sontag once said that “a writer is someone who pays attention to the world.” I am. But the execution to transforming your observations into literature is enormous and painstaking. People who are in great need to read and obtain information are in places with the least access to news and books.
I need to end this post with this paragraph. You may notice that this particular post is filled with mumbling ideas not very well thought through. Perhaps this time, the best writing technique is no style at all. And that next time, I need to write about that random act of kindness post to remind myself that there are good people still.
Stay safe everyone.