#not libraries

I can’t find the words to talk about what’s going on in the Mediterranean and across Europe at the moment. I can’t think about the countless families piled into ill-equipped and unsafe boats and trucks and trains, heading for border after border, seeking a safe place. I can’t let my mind wrap around the fact that right at this moment there are tens of thousands of men, women and children leaving torturous, unsafe situations in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Africa, elsewhere, fleeing their homes, with only the shadow of a possibility of asylum waiting for them at the other end, or packed into lorries, makeshift shelters, on roadways and near borders.

This is nothing new, but it’s reached crisis point. There are human beings living  in inexorably abject conditions, taking incredible risks with their lives to reach other deplorable, though less dangerous, conditions, and many dying every day. 

I can’t talk about this, or stare for long at the facts, but I saw a photograph today that made me want to talk. I saw a photo of a toddler’s body, washed onto a beach. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and his hair was cut short. Someone had cared about him enough to dress him and cut his hair. He was somebody’s son, and they had tried to escape with him, probably from Syria, knowing that their lives were at great risk, in order to reach a safer place. How awful were their living conditions to take this risk?

This made me want to talk. I am not in a position to offer my home. I have little to give, financially or materially. I am looking into what ways I can offer my skills or whatever else I have. But I do have a voice. And I’m using that from today.

This is not good enough. We have to take notice.

These are our fellow human beings.

Our fellow human beings are dying in horrible circumstances. Their children are dying. They are living like animals - worse than animals.

Despite the artwork on the opening screen and other imagery of books, the recently released Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is not about salvaging books, but paintings.