The World We Live in Now

It’s been a couple of weeks since I have written anything. Around that time I became aware that I had become quite overwhelmed with the material I had been reading about the Holocaust. People have asked me about that in the past – how I was handling the horrors of the things I was reading and writing about? Other than just after our visit to Auschwitz, I haven’t had any serious difficulties with it. For a few weeks before Christmas, however, I was reading some searing first-hand accounts of living and surviving in Auschwitz, written by Polish men who had managed to stay alive there. I also read Martin Amis’ brilliant but devastating novel The Zone of Interest, which is set in Auschwitz during the last couple of years of the war. These various pieces were a potent mix, substantially different from reading some of the other more academic texts that I had been studying.

I’ve had the experience of being overwhelmed in that manner before, though not for many years, and I recognized that I needed to take a step back and to simply live here and now in my present life, and not as I was beginning to feel, almost as though I was living in a parallel universe called Auschwitz. And so that is what I have been doing. I talked with my friend, Maureen, about what I had been feeling, and I deliberately stopped reading the vast array of Holocaust literature that I brought here. Instead I’ve been reading some mystery novels, supplied by the used book store around the corner from our place. I haven’t indulged in that kind of reading for some time and it’s been fun. I’m not certain when or in what way I will go on with the exploration that I had been making about that period of our collective history that we designate “The Holocaust”, but for sure it has become a deep part of my understanding and appreciation of what we humans are about.

In the past several days, like people everywhere, we have been following the horrific incidents in France. We get the New York Times several times a week and have Shaw cable and so are connected with CBC, CNN, BBC, and other news channels. This is the world we live in now. Extremists can and do strike anywhere. However, the proliferation of these events is stimulating dialogues among different religious groupings and nations that might have been unimaginable previously. Even though there are enormous divides, for example, in many European countries about the perils or benefits of Islamic immigration, I believe that the world is moving toward another stage of understanding with respect to what is politically and communally needed to undermine and discredit extremists. No individual country or people can now protect or insulate its people alone. Muslim political and religious leaders are taking harder lines publically against the outrages perpetrated in the name of Allah. We live in interesting times.

In the meantime for us, life goes on gloriously here in Puerto Vallarta. It’s a simple life, oriented around being able to walk outside without the constraints of winter, organizing some changes to our condo, getting groceries and deciding on meals at home or out somewhere on the malecon, some telephone sessions for me and internet, reading and relaxing. More and more we have a genuine feeling that we live here – it’s one third of the year and that is a substantial portion. We’re not just tourists anymore. At the same time, at the back of our minds is the fact that when we return to Toronto we will be engaged in finding a new place to live. We’ve decided to buy a condo and have been looking at what is currently available on mls.ca. That’s always fun. There are places available more or less in the area where we want to live and more or less in the neighbourhood of what we can afford, but we will have to wait until we get back at the end of March to go around to see places and to get a “feel” of what it would be like to live there. I like all of that so I look forward to it.

I hope all are well and doing better than I would be if I was spending the winter in the chilly northland.