Aisha

So I had a post all planned that involved green velvet curtains, a frosty sunrise, food, and a documentary about Joan Rivers; but then I saw this and everything I was going to write about seemed pretty ridiculous.

I first saw the picture on a blog I follow called 'art + craft = craftivism' and the post containing the picture has links to resources about Afghan women and their human rights if you'd like to read more.

I will post about the things I was planning to, probably tomorrow, because after my initial feelings of selfishness and kind of self-disgust (that I write about my knitting and watching theatre and movies and places I go and things I eat and whatever else I think is vaguely interesting for me to document for future reference and for anyone who might happen to read this), I decided that me not doing what I do is not going to change anything in terms of the injustices in the world. I started this blog for me and it's nice that some people read it and leave comments and it makes me appreciate some of the things I do and have more and it pushes me a bit in terms of making things so I can write about them; I didn't start this blog to change the world or fight for human rights. There are other ways I can try to help do that if I want to that are probably more effective.

But the image and the abrieviated article really upset me. It made me think about how fricken lucky I am to live where I live, how lucky I am to be able to write about such mundane things as knitting and classic movies as if they are of any significance. It made me think that any crappiness that I'm dealing with at the moment is actually so unimportant in the scheme of things and that I'm lucky that the worst thing to have happened to me lately is being broken up with. I mean, I'd thought that at various times before over the last 7 weeks, but this image really drove that message home.

So I didn't want to pretend I hadn't seen it, or not acknowledge it. And blogs like mine are ultimately selfish, I wouldn't ever try to deny it - I mean I've just turned that image and what it means into a diatribe about me...but I guess no one is forced to read it and I can still have a social conscience and have a blog about making stuff. Well, I hope so anyway.

I don't know much about the situation in Afghanistan but I do know that the 18 year old woman in that image, which is about to be on the cover of a magazine on newstands around the world, is pretty brave and amazing. And it's pretty sad that one human could do that to another and that there's a culture where it's okay for this type of thing to happen. And I hope that that image means more people like me who had no idea that this was happening, that it could happen, have their awareness raised, even a little bit. I mean I knew about various types of extreme violence towards women around the world, but to see an image of it like that is very confronting. And I don't really have any more to say, because really, what can be said?