 |
| Experience calmness of mind and body at Allan Gardens Conservatory. |
Wars were raging out in our world that day. News of children buried under blasted concrete, its mangled pieces crushing the hearts of the ones who never got a chance.
Wars raging here, too. A different kind. Our hearts bleed but we shoot. Fire. Detonate. Crush. With fiery locution.
So, I escaped during a momentary lull in the fracas between two warring souls of the North.
I walked into this breathing space where foliage and flower extended their joyful salutations. Toured the grounds, saw the baby raccoons confused by the daylight, caught red-handed in their overnight traps. But their fate is freedom, not eradication.
My eyes floated with the koi. My ears tuned into the stream's trickling murmurs, and the silent wanderings of its inhabitants.
Like the turtles treading serenity, popping their stripy slippery heads in and out of their safe hiding appendage, I, too, hid away in this place of irony - where nature flourishes under the care and life-sustaining tools of its dedicated human gardeners. Do the petals bloom in Gaza, even among the most anguished cries of the captive and the killer? Irony blossoms in all spaces, as dark and unyielding as human cruelty is.
In this moment of tranquility, I will catch my breath, will heal my wounded tongue, will revive my conscience, will honour the dead and dying who will never see my world.
With the memory of this moment, I may face the storms outside again with self-effacing tenderness.
I may agree to a cease-fire.
