I came back today. I thought I had known despair before, but what I saw today is beyond despair.
It is not grief, nor horror, nor pain. It is something colder, a stillness where even God seems to have withdrawn His hand.
The sky was impossibly blue. The kind of blue that mocks you, that makes you wonder whether beauty itself is a crime.
I walked through streets that no longer exist, streets that were my childhood.
They are now a wilderness of stone, wire, and dust.
A man stood on a heap, a neighbor, I think.
He pointed and said, “It’s here.”
I asked him how far.
He looked down.
And I understood: my house was beneath his feet.
I lifted my phone, as if the machine could recognize what I could not. The screen glowed; there was nothing to see. The earth had swallowed the distances. Even the smell of home was gone. It was as if the thread connecting me to life itself had been cut.
I dug with my hands. The dust burned. My palms bled.
My mother had told me: “Search for anything we can save.” And so I obeyed her like a son obeys the last voice that still believes there is meaning in obedience.
From a house that once cost my father one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, a lifetime of labor, of hope, of decency, I found two things:
a knife, and a pillow.
Two relics of civilization. One for necessity, one for illusion.
That is what remains of man.
I sat in the ruins, the blue of my shirt turned gray with ash, and I thought:
this is the end not of a city, but of meaning itself.
I thought of my parents, their hands, their faith in honest work.
How will they bear this? How will any man bear seeing his father’s roof turned into dust by a stranger’s hands, hands that will never know the names of those they destroyed?
But what tears me apart more than ruin is silence. No one speaks to us.
No one tells us where to go, who will rebuild, or who is responsible.
The politicians talk of victories, the generals of strategy, the world of peace and progress.
But none of them live here among the ashes. None of them stand where I stand, sifting through their own dead.
And those who claim to represent us, where are they? Where is the money they collected in our name, the promises they made before the cameras, the slogans they wrote while we buried our children?
Who among them will come to this ruin and say: Forgive us, we failed you?
Not one.
They sit in offices with clean shirts, counting our corpses as figures on paper. They say “reconstruction,” “aid,” “negotiations,” as though the vocabulary of power could fill the emptiness of a mother’s bed.
I tell you the truth: there is no crime greater than indifference.
The murderer at least acknowledges the victim.
But those who look away, they kill the soul itself.
I brushed the dust from my shirt, though I knew it was useless.
I wanted to see if there was still color left in the world.
There wasn’t.
The blue had become the color of mourning.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking, not from fear, but from the unbearable realization that we have become expendable to the world.
Our suffering is entertainment, our death a policy, our endurance a statistic.
I wept then, openly, shamelessly.
I, who once believed in the dignity of suffering, now see that dignity itself has been annihilated.
There is nothing noble in being forgotten.
If you are reading this, do not admire the style or the language.
Lower your head, and weep.
Because this dust, this silence, this cry, is what remains of us.
The #OireachtasLibrary has worked with the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland to make the Dublin Gazette from its special collections available on the innovative and digital-led platform. @VirtualTreasury#SeeForYourself#VirtualTreasury102
More info - https://t.co/cGrEOlKbr0
John Clarke’s Xmas pop up shop in the @dublincivictrust building 18 Ormond Quay Upper has opened. The 18th &19thc objects & furniture take a year to collect & restore. It’s a wonderful shopping experience as John has a wealth of knowledge. Tell him I sent you ♻️💚🎄
This is Leo Ralph Villamayor from the Philippines, an agency nurse.
On November 23rd he was on the way to his graduation in the Gresham Hotel when the stabbing happened.
Leo quickly raced to the little girl and did CPR for minutes until the ambulance arrived on scene.
Hero ❤️
#AI models can read #handwriting we may not recognise with the human eye. Andy Stauder explains how @Transkribus processes and understands different styles of handwriting from different people and eras, even medical doctors!
Listen now on #ADAPTRadio:
https://t.co/a64eyEXa1M
#AI is modernising record keeping & documentation. Dr. Dave Brown @VirtualTreasury and Andy Stauder @Transkribus describe how we can apply technology currently being used by Transkribus in other ways such as with medical documents.
Listen now: https://t.co/a64eyEXa1M #ADAPTRadio
Just a few hours to go till our online evening lecture kicks off at 6pm - we're really looking forward to hearing what @BrianGurrin has to tell us about 'The early censuses of Ireland and their surviving original returns'! @VirtualTreasury@AccGenIreland@DeptCultureIRL
Virtual Treasury 101 Research Showcase: Into the Past + Back to the Future. Free in-person event , Sat 1 Jul 2023 at 13:30 | Eventbrite
@VirtualTreasury @NARIreland #virtualrecordtreasury https://t.co/o4qgTmci3n
Dublin Cemeteries Trust will be hosting Dr. Timothy Murtagh to discuss his book 'Spectral Mansions: Henrietta Street and Dublin's tenement past'.
Wednesday April 5 at 7:30 pm.
Register for live stream: https://t.co/sUm0PbxSR1
@DubHistorians@TLRHub
Imagine if we could move beyond sheep and sitka spruce in our uplands:
• no more fires
• clean air & water
• stunning amenity
• helping to meet climate targets
• abundant nature
• traditional farming
• diverse economies
• healthy bogs and forests
• beauty, peace
We've 2 return flights to Athens to give away to one lucky winner, with thanks to our friends @AegeanAirlines ✈️🇬🇷☀️
Who would you take with you if you won?
To be in with a chance to win:
FOLLOW & RT
Winner announced this Friday – Good Luck🤞
T&C’s: https://t.co/FarHBQrqS2