What started off as a description of my weekend and became this...

Just back from another London-break - had a blast as usual. This time, more friends from Canada were over, crossing paths on their various travels. Though I left my jogging gear at home, I don't feel too bad about it as we must've walked for at least 5 hours each day. Our wonderful and generous friend living in London was her wonderful and generous self - putting up with four different house-guests (two of them family!) in two schedules...

On Sunday we got slightly lost around the East End but eventually found our way back to something recognisable - in this case the Square Mile. Monday, my friend and I played at being wealthy and walked through Knightbridge - had gelato at Harrods and lunch in Kensington Gardens. Harrods was fun - in that kind of peering into another world kind of fun - the world of £110/kg morrels and Bvlgari watches... I even secretly kept an eye out for celebrities... (didn't see anyone but in truth, I'm bad with faces...).

Two of our friends were on their way to Poland - which is my introduction to why we went to the Imperial War Museum. The Holocaust exhibit seemed like an appropriate testing ground for her reaction to Auschwitz - though I suppose no safe and sterile exhibit, regardless of how well done, could match seeing the actual place. Nonetheless, it was a very moving experience - okay, I was glad of the low lighting - though mine weren't the only strategic coughs and throat clearings. It's always funny to walk out of exhibits like that back into the rest of the museum with its bright lights, white walls, and helpful employees. Particularly jarring I think when the first thing you are confronted with is more guns, tanks, fighter planes, and replica missiles. But of course, these are the weapons of the good guys...

It was interesting (maybe only to me) - one of the quotes evocatively displayed in the Holocaust exhibit was 'all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing'. I hate that quotation. I really really do. To paraphrase Pilate, what is 'good'? Who are these good men? What is the 'evil' they will protect me from? Of course, we're expected to digest these 'wise sayings' like pablum - the good men are good and they are so because they are good; evil, concomitantly, is evil and it is so because it is evil. The problem as I see it - and I also recognize the problematically reductive potential of this argument - is that 'evil' and 'good' are just words we use to make monsters and heroes. Quite frankly, anyone convinced of their own righteousness and the manifest destiny of that righteousness is someone to run from - quickly. Though I suppose my problem is that such comments are generally deployed in the service of some 'common good'. Which isn't to say that I'm advocating that we all sit down and let evil get on with it over my particular semantic tics. It's just frustrating: these wise old sayings that we parrot at each other as though they have any meaning - any applicability; as though we can see evil and know it as always that which is not us.

Ooh I can hear it...'come on, everyone knows what it means...yer over-analysing again'- but does everyone know? Really? Cause come on, evil doesn't start off all blustery and scary, red smoke and heat, horns an' all - good doesn't pop out of the egg all shiny and strong. It just too binary - too simple.

Although, thinking about it - I kinda like it as it was used in that particular exhibit. Because I think it was accusatory - challenging - Not the smug and always already remorseful, exculpatory declaration of some politician or prelate - something more desperate and powerful: not 'all it takes blah blah blah' but 'good men did nothing and evil flourished here and here and here'. Which is, I think, more accurate because it is specific - no one can combat EVIL on some abstract plane. Looking at those awful pictures, I didn't see EVIL - just people. If we're all waiting for EVIL to announce itself, we're not going to get far as 'good men'. It's also interestingly provocative in that particular situation because the viewer there in that museum is always 'good' - this is how people think of themselves, right? Or at least, this is how we're supposed to think of ourselves - we're basically good. Maybe not great - not saints, but really deep down, we're alright. But to be confronted with that familiar quotation in that place - in a dark room surrounded by those particularly present images of suffering that cannot be comforted - suddenly that darkness and murkiness seep into things - between words and intentions. To be a viewer on this particular history, to be outside, confronted with things that cannot be changed - that have not changed (Stalin in Russia, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Rwanda...) - is always to wonder what would I have done? and never be satisfied.

***

I fear than I'm falling into soapboxing on this blog...

It was so great to see my family friends - though I find it funny sometimes how conflicted I get about my role with them. I've known them both since they were born and now they are beautiful, kind, generous, and intelligent young women - and I sometimes get stuck acting like a 'big sister' of the most annoying sort when all I really want to do is be their friend. This is why I generally think myself unfit for motherhood - I'm a bit of a control freak. I'm terrified of something hurting the people I love - when my brother came to visit and went to Whitby by himself for a night, I spent a good deal of time worrying - not about his physical safety but his psychological safety: what if someone was rude to him? What if they hurt his feelings? What if he felt alone or scared or upset? Keeping in mind my brother was 23, over 6 feet, and more travelled than I am... But there it is. Sometimes I just feel too big - like I'm taking up too much space, being too agressive, too prescriptive - all the things I hate when I see them in other people.

Huh.

I need to change that.

And all that was to say - I had a great weekend in London. And I want to say thank you to Marina and Micaela and Jim - I am rested and well-fed - spiritually and physically. And it's nice to have friends who love me anyway... cause I'm alright really!