Hard news
It’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in the news. I took the photos and stories of carnage in the heart of Paris to bed with me last night and woke to more of the same this morning. The other stories I was talking and writing about yesterday seem dim and small in the wake of so much blood and terror.
Paris is very far away; I have never been there. No one I know—so far as I know—was a victim or a witness to the attacks and their aftermath. But for Parisians and France, this is a day that will have its own name, like “9-11.” Had this happened in Baghdad or Aleppo, it would have just been “Friday.” So what is different about Paris?
The Paris of my imagination. “Cafe Terrace at Night,” Vincent van Gogh
As a college-educated American of European extraction, there is a kind of pilgrimage trail in my imagination. Stops along the way include places like London and Barcelona and Florence and Venice. But right there at the top of the list is Paris, for all the usual corny reasons—the art I studied, the movies I watched, the writers I cherished, the culture of conversation and good food. Paris is not just the capital of the French republic; it’s the capital of the good life, a place where western civilization is done well.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s a place where the arts of peace had seemingly overcome, for a while at least, a past as bloody and violent as anywhere on earth. Not that Paris really is the shining City of Light of my imagining. So the news–and not just from last night–tells me. It has the problems of any place inhabited by humans.
Which is what kept me up, obsessively surfing the news sites. Hate has no homeland. What happened in Paris can and does burst forth on a small-town campus or in a movie theater or a church. And that’s the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.
Tags: listeningpost
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Nicely written.
A thoughtful and well-written piece, Dale. Thanks.
There is more to Paris too. Paris is the home of much of our finest art, our greatest sculptures, the birth place and inspiring place of many artists. Old Paris is beautiful, a world heritage city that still functions, and where one can walk the streets of the past in the present. Paris is stylish, and one becomes more stylish by being there. Paris is multicultural. France’s long history with Africa makes it home to many french Africans and french of Arab descent. Paris is Jewish, and has a long history of a Jewish population, many who found their way to Paris from Africa as well. Paris is complicated. France is complicated. There is love in Paris, there is sophistication and intellectualism but there is also anger and pockets of hate and racism. There are disenfranchised youth and manipulative forces. It is not one thing, it is a story of all of its parts. Voices of reason and inclusiveness need to be strong and moral and loud. Paris is a world stage. A beloved city. What happens in France affects the whole world. And you are right, hate can live anywhere. It is much harder to nurture love.