nothing better/the postal service

Bent Books, West End

I've been listening to random songs recently and 'Nothing Better' by The Postal Service continually creeps in. I've listened to it three times in a row already tonight! It's a sweet girl/boy interplay and the voices are so sweet and the music has that urgency I just love driving it. I love Ben Gibbard's words and phrasing.

The last few days have been full of strange and lovely emotions. Saying farewell to a friend/work colleague. Greeting and taking advantage of some time with my beautiful aunty. Seeing friends for the first time in a while. Viewing an amazing and hellishly emotionally real film (Hotel Rwanda, which I recommend for a sense of perspective).

My aunty was visiting Brisbane for business. My sister and I picked her up from the apartment she was staying at and we all went to West End for a lovely dinner in the warm Brisbane evening. We drank red wine and enjoyed our dinner of pizza and turkish bread. For some reason our conversation kept turning to our concerns for the state of the world. My shock of the details after witnessing 'Hotel Rwanda'. The horrible thought that a similar situation is occuring in Sudan. Our aunty told us a story of a 16 year old boy in Adelaide who was shot in the head by another boy simply because he was talking to his girlfriend. Our consternation at how helpless and useless you feel knowing that a family member or friend's family member suffers from Alzheimer's Disease or dementia.

The conversation meandered and we began talking about tattoos. My sister has some beautiful rainbow butterflies and a sun that she designed herself. My aunty's daughter has two tattoos of very mischievious cartoon characters. We were all describing what we would have done if we were brave enough. Then I heard the most amazing story that I had never heard before. My aunty said that she would like to get a tattoo of a white rose. Here is the reason why:

http://korean.bruderhof.org/articles/white-rose.htm

There have always been amazing human beings out there trying to make a difference and expose how Government's and Leaders actions and decisions effect the world. Humans who realise that what is happening is not right and stand up and speak out for what they feel and know is right. There are people like Paul Rusesabagina whose instincts and whatever it was that guided him during that time in Rwanda enabled him to save the lives of over a thousand refugees from being slaughtered so terribly brutally just as those one million were killed in the genocide.

I really am having trouble fathoming anything that happens in this world.