25 June 2023
Sifting through scraps of paper I sometimes keep because of clever wording of a thought or saying I’ve read or heard, I found one in particular that had me imagining brothers and sisters bent into curving lines and shadows. “When the world doesn’t listen, be the one who does.”
Thousands, maybe millions exist, slumping in their seats – institutional chairs, trash piles, curbsides or dark corners of hostile rooms. All discarded amid the noise, popularity, celebrity. Many more just without any space to curl into. Others, I’ve passed at random moments with angst during my lifetime on deaf streets in Manhattan and Milan. And today, not having witnessed Mumbai, Mogadishu, or Mosul, would I still have the strength of heart to look, limit my thoughts and just… listen?
