:::by benne:::

�Suffer!� the almost medieval yell rings out across the playground as one child taunts another. To be at the mercy of someone else, the most supplicant position, unable to wrest one�s self from an outrageous sling or arrow.

Conjuring up images of Joan of Arc (she was completely nuts don�t you know), starving children I Africa, artist locked in studios without anything but their wretched art. To suffer, to be the subject of sufferance, and to suffer the small the children.

A miserable afternoon in a rainy flat in the middle of winter with a constant stream of fluid from my nose, an earache and nothing on the tv. I make chicken soup, I put on my favourite woolly socks, I wrap the blanket around me and hunker down further into the couch, yet still I suffer. I am the subject, completely unable to act effectively to change my situation to a better one. I am passive and yet still responsive to stimuli � the only one to note my own responses though, is me. Suffering is so personal, so entirely selfish, and so encapsulated into a being.

A woman with a lined face at the checkout complaining of the price of a can of tuna.

The boy on the Community Aid advert, squatting in the dirt, belly bloated with air.

Sweet martyr covered in rose petals, her eyes raised in marble to gaze ceaselessly at the heavens from where she believes salvation will issue forth.

Man in a brown coat, wrapped around a brown paper bag with a brown bottle, in a dank, brown part of town.

The ache of trying, the knowledge that all is useless, the belief that not even your guts are enough to pull you free from this mess. Hope leaves, is replaced by dull acceptance, and what follows is either the darkness of eternity or the bright dawn of a new situation. To suffer momentarily, to suffer greatly, to suffer profoundly. Just how profound is it to wander blindly through your life with a constant pain? Whether �tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows�.

In this technoage of �get over it-ness�, suffering holds little value. Weak victim, if you say you have suffered. Bill Gates never suffered, he just did what he had to do. Vietnam man, it wasn�t our fault, we were at the mercy of the government, we suffered excruciating conditions� nearly as bad as the Vietnamese. I ain�t your bitch, I ain�t no crack ho, I ain�t even American! In suffering there is still one single choice left, and this is the choice that holds movies together, makes music possible, and relieves our weary minds when we have seen the collapse of buildings, of societies, of love.

I may suffer, but I will be no victim.

<< 2002-09-24 @ 2:59 p.m. >>

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