exercising my literacy

Surely there's more I can do than just sigh...

My heart aches.

It's a shame that colloquial overuse has vacuumed so much out of these three words, because they do encompass all that I feel now. You know, that feeling when the only thing that you can do to relieve the heaviness sitting square on your chest is to take a deep breath in and sigh.

The foolishness of it all is that nothing even happened. I just sat down and watched a documentary, and now I feel so sad.

Blogs are good for this reason because it is a rare medium in which I can say things that I normally don't convey to other people. Serious issues make for awkward conversation in a society with an affinity for only polite conversation about meaningless things like the weather and reality TV.

Ha, the irony. The documentary I just watched, that was reality TV.

I hate it how I am so affected by documentaries and newspaper articles. They stay with me for days and days and days. I could already hear how melodramatic that sounded as I typed it - "I saw this documentary and it made me so sad!" Sounds trite and empty and so very blonde.

But oh how sick I feel. The cruel, cruel juxtaposition. Watching a doco about destitute Indian children living in red light districts of Calcutta (and their looming fate into the abyss of prostitution and drug trafficking), then flipping through the SMH's Sydney Magazine. People who spend four figures on a pair of speakers and seven for a run down terrace. People who spend more on cocktails in one night than an Indian child sees in a year.

Blah. People moan about the injustice of the world all the time. Socialist greenies who don't shave their armpits and nag people to join Greenpeace and eat lentils and tofu. We roll our eyes and walk on by.

But hell, as I live and breathe now, the children live and breathe too. What will become of them? What is there that I can do to change this somehow?

What can I do?

posted by me. @ 12:02 AM