TRUTH...
...Or "The Mess around us"

Old Bobby Dylan now....

...and then!

STORY nr. 1: He was a thin man* in his late fifties, dressed in a funny and fancy costume and a graceless hat. His slight hunch was more obvious with years and his haggard face was still full of that suspicion of downy beard. He was stammering a few indifferent cliché words of gratitude to the people that granted him that little shining prize he was holding in his hands. The music industry was happy to oblige to a man who, despite his young revolutionary attitude, had made them some extra bucks over the years. "The times they are a changing" he used to sing many years ago, didn't he?

STORY nr. 2: It was only 2 years ago, when the “tomahawk of war” was unburried by the “Peacekeepers” of this world**, and was aimed against a whole nation. In a few weeks, what was built in decades of peace, was demolished by the most cowardly attack ever recorded in history. As reason for that action was declared the obvious oppression of a national minority by the dominant one. It was a direct intervention in the way a sovereign –even if it was not a democratic- state was handling its internal affairs. 2 years later another minority in a nearby sovereign state –belonging to the same ethnic group with the previous one- is starting a guerilla war against the legal government, aiming to divide a newly formed and poor country by force and change the borders in a region that has in the past been characterized as “The powder magazine of Europe”. The “Peacemakers”, who by the way have established an extended military presence in the region, denied the call to protect the sovereignity of the endangered state, although this was petitioned by the legal government of this country, insisting that they are not going to interfere in this state’s internal affairs. It would be just ridiculous if it were not a matter of life and death.

STORY nr 3: A little boy***, who lived only 3 years till facing the cruelty of fate, was found to be suffering by a rare form of cancer. A slight chance of alterring an unfair kharma appeared due to the scientific progress made in a hospital, in that big superpower country of controversy, the one that exports violence and progress, good and evil in allmost the same proportions. Thanks to the privatised mass media, the same traders of human pain and misery that exist allmost everywhere, in direct imitation of the “reality show” example of broadcasting news, thousands of people became aware of that family’s tragedy and contributed, penny by penny, a large amount of money in a bank account to pay for the operation’s expenses; those that the poor boy’s family could not by any chance provide. The little boy died 10 months later, never even having the chance of hope. The bank denied to release the money directly to the boy’s family, based on some interpretation of the law. It took a long process, a governmental intervention, to finally reach to a decision of releasing the money, just a couple of hours before the funeral took place... While in the same country, another little boy is on its way to meet the reversal of his fate, because another bank has made the obvious choice (if a choice in such matters does ever exist) to just give the money to the people who needed it for the reason it was gathered.

These three short stories are totally different and seemingly irrelevant to each other. These three short and real stories show one thing though. That no absolute truth can be found, no consistency can be detected, no trust can be put on anything created by human beings. And if only two people living together as a couple usually mess their lives so badly, not being able to create a healthy relationship and a happy living, imagine what a mess the millions of people of the earth have created through the centuries. Religious and racial conflicts, imperfect political systems, legal systems full of flaws and voids, uneven chances and corruption due to the quest for wealth, power and fame, have led to a totally contradictory, unnatural and fake environment for every generation to live in. So... despite the thousands of laws, justice is still absent, despite the image that many people create for themselves, the outcome will most probably be misleading and deceptive; You see, the truth of things, the truth of people, or some extracts of it, lies deep inside them, in a place unknown and allmost impossible to reach in conventional ways. The truth of things and the truth of people is actually too painful to discover and experience. Or again the truth of things and truth of people, the answer to all of our questions, might actually been “blowing in the wind”... But I wouldn’t bet on it!

V.N.

PS: Do not conceive this article as something even approaching The Truth. It was just an interpretation of The Mess around us.

* Old and undangerous Bob Dylan receiving a GRAMMY or something award for his contribution in musical development.
** NATO bombing sovereign Yugoslavia to “protect” Albanians in yugoslav territory, but not doing anything to prevent Albanian outlaw guerillas from dividing FYROM (Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia) by armed violence.
*** Names are not important here. The reality of those facts is.