- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
- Tags: jesuischarlie
He walked to work that day. It was very cold, but it was a quick walk and though he knew he’d regret not bringing his coat later, he figured he could get a ride from one of the others in the office. Yet when he walked in his mood became foul. It was more of the same, always the same. Frustrations with what they could and could not say, which sleeping bears they could poke and which they had to let alone in slumber even as their great snoring was ruining peace everywhere. And he had a claxon in his soul. He believed in scaring up every last hypocrisy until they were exposed to the sun like the rotting desert carrion they were, blemishes on the sacrosanct beliefs of lovers everywhere, their focus on greed, hate, attention and a mystifying allegiance to whatever it was powering their feverishly closed minds. Love was open! He’d been raised by parents, separately but still in loving homes, to engage debate in the name of what’s right, and his hands took to the purpose of his fed heart. To be honest, he was just a loyal to his own cause as those he believed misguided, his writings and art a mission to awaken the better parts of humanity and confront the ugly, the mistaken, the unfair and sick. Yet his hands, so free to compose whatever his heart instructed since childhood, felt shackled. When the news came in around mid-day, commentators droning their monotonous clamour for fear and ratings, he didn’t initially pay attention. Then he did as the body count was revealed and details became less sketchy than the art for which he was known. Suddenly he realized his own had been struck, soldiers in a war for understanding that were, in his mind, allies in illuminating how the great unwashed were kept filthy with lies and beliefs in things that did no justice to true human faith. On the way home, he walked in the frigid air and was thankful as he shivered. It could have just as well been him on the other side of the barrel. Tomorrow he would have the chance to draw again. To bleed with ink his truth, their truth, the truth to set everyone free. But today they bled a red darker than any he’d known and he cried for them, tears turning to ice on his cheeks. #jesuischarlie (at Je Suis Charlie)