refugees – Aspirational Adventures

I’ve been trying to write a post about this book Salt To The Sea, which is set at the end of World War Two in the Baltic.

While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known January 30, 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army. The ship was overcrowded with more than 10,500 passengers — the intended capacity was approximately 1,800 — and more than 9,000 people, including 5,000 children, lost their lives.

Sepetys also says, in her notes at the back of the book, that two other refugee boats were bombed or torpedoed as well as two boats carrying Jewish prisoners of war. All destroyed by either Russian, British or American fire. She says how divers do not like to go near that area because there is a strange atmosphere due to the over 20,000 innocent lives drowned there.

Straight after that I read Slaughterhouse Five another atrocity by the Allies towards the end of WWII which murdered refugees who had fled to Dresden believing it to be the city no one would bomb because it had not strategic value. Over 10,000 people were murdered there! As many as in both atomic bombs in Japan!

I’ve been wanting to write about how these things have been hidden and explore ideas around the so-called-good-guys narrative and why this happens. But I’m afraid on Tuesday morning I was staying in a cheap hotel, put on the TV for the dog to watch whilst I had a shower and saw the news that the British government had passed the atrocious Illegal Migration Bill had been passed.

I spent the morning writing angry poetry that I must edit and do something with and I still can’t quite get my head around it all. So for now I am going to park it safely, not blog any more about it, but work on something to say because I believe, even though you are a smallish audience, I have something to say. But I need to speak clearly.

There maybe other blogs to come on other subjects that drift through my sphere but I will get back to this and will expand more on what I see is the connection to the two books mentioned and what has just been passed by the UK government

True To Self

I love walking round my local park, though I realised how easy it was to just go into auto pilot and not notice things so now I am making sure I say focused and present. I take my phone so I can take photos. I now don’t just love it I appreciate and enjoy it too.

Anyway as a follow on from the last post, what I had written got me thinking deeper. about being who we are not who we are not. For instance Princess Leia could not be anything other than she was. Even when we get to know Luke Skywalker we know from that opening scene that all he wanted to do was be a star-ship pilot not a farmer. It was in his blood to be something more than.

I have been reading “My Fourth Time, We Drowned” by Sally Hayden and as well as feeling angry at what is going with the UN and the refugees in Africa, I also feel pretty inadequate. Here is a woman publishing stories that should shock the world with the inhumanity of privileged humans to vulnerable humans, and of what trauma does to people. But then I had to realise that I could not be a Sally Hayden. I can only be a Diane Woodrow. I cannot be what I am not.

If you watch a lot of Pixar and Disney as I do one of the key themes is the main character trying to be something they are not. It is a reoccurring theme and often, no actually always, makes me cry. I cry because too often we push others into being what they are not, or are pushed ourselves. It happens too often yet we either let it happen or do it to others.

Going back to the marriage theme from the last post – as well as sometimes grieving the changes that happen to us in marriage the that we are not the younger people we were when we first met, I think sometimes we try to manipulate that other person into being what we would like them to be. And depending on how they responded to that as a child how they then respond to that as a spouse.

We do all do it a little bit with our friends to fit in with them. We allow ourselves to be what they would like us to be, but then we get frustrated and angry, or accept that mold and forget who we really are.

So I started this post with a photo of my regular dog walk and of how I am trying to be more present there, trying to see it more as it is rather than ignoring it. I am also trying to do this with my friends and family. I am trying to accept and be present with who they are and enjoying them for what they are and not for what I think they should be. I am also learning to be more “me”, doing more of what I want, being more of who I want to be.

Hopefully from this I can appreciate, enjoy and love my friends and family more and more.