Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 4:00 … Sleep tends to be the difficult since Thursday. Words too, which awkwardly manage to work their way out of my mind. Yet none of my family or my friends came under the wheels of the truck of death, nobody of my knowledge has been directly touched by the tragedy of July 14th in Nice. I checked. For its horror, its dimensions, this carnage, this abomination, is struggling to become reality. Better indeed leave it where it is in the unmanifested, where it should have remained, a nightmare. I think of that little boy who witnessed the massacre who said to his grandfather: “Grandpa say it’s a dream, eh, say it is a dream …”. I am like this little boy, shocked, in denial … I haven’t seen anything, I didn’t, I haven’t heard anything … Am I alive? Yes of course ! We must continue to live and especially to love, eyes wide open, in full awareness, in full light, in the azure, if only as a tribute to those who have been less fortunate this evening …
The Promenade, I haven’t been able to walk it since. I watched the images in a loop on the internet. The comments, sadness, reactions of some and the others. I shared with strangers these emotions that we have great difficulty in naming. This disorder, this confusion, this abatement. Tears and anger. Standing KO. Thoughts and prayers for those who have left, stars in their eyes, dazzled. Haven’t they seen, nor heard the truck arrive? It was the celebration day of a nation, the 14th of July, families went out together. I think about Amy, the young 12 year old girl who went out for the first time without her parent. Amy has departed in a firework… I think about her parents. I look for words of comfort, consolation. I can not find them, I’m speechless.
I read beautiful texts, touching poems, admire designs that attempt to express what came next … Nice bruised, hit in its identity, this walk so dear to our heart, defiled. There are traces of blood. Underneath the hearts, texts, flowers and candles for everyone. We see fresh mois brown blood marking the ground … We can follow the demonic race of the mentally ill who attacked an innocent crowd, carefree. The zig zag to better strike every woman, every child, every man. Strollers, bikes, bodies splashed on the walk … 84 martyrs!
Mute anger mines the judgment, blurres its thinking, heats up the spirits, spreads on the net, sometimes legitimate, often smelly, this anger seeks a scapegoat. Please read the wonderful text of my colleague Stephen Robison in a call to sobriety. A text full of modesty. A text full of grief and holding back anger that says so much anyway …
It is early morning, the national mourning is over. Nice is silent, I leave my house, I go out of my silence, pray for the souls who are still agitated over the Bay of the Angels. I know they are agitated because no, I can not believe that they were ready to leave … I can not believe that 6 members of the same family have chosen to give up one of their own, a survivor of the horror, having lost husband, son, parents and in-laws mown down by a deranged madman … Because you have to be crazy and sick to commit such a grave.
I’ll walk this clear dawn and at every step I’ll say that beautiful prayer written by our Coco, this Ho’oponopono dedicated to Nice. Walking, breathing, forgiving for all those who fly each morning in this reborn azure on the Promenade des Anglais.
