Big jet planes
24 Juli 2014 | Nederland, Utrecht
"And the ones you left behind
And the ones we left behind"
~ Angus & Julia Stone ~
Just over a week ago, I thought I would write my next blog about big jet planes and live music. I went to an Angus & Julia Stone concert early July in the 'Amsterdamse Bos' open air theatre, which is situated in a forest right next to Schiphol airport. Usually the nearby runway isn't used during a concert, but due to an emergency repair to one of the other runways, airplanes were still taking off and flying low over the theatre when Angus & Julia started playing. So for the first 4 songs or so of the concert, planes were adding their low rumbling engine sounds to the music every few minutes. Big jet planes taking people to far away places. I didn't get around to writing that blog then. And then last Thursday happened, and the live music part of the story doesn't seem quite as relevant as the airplane part of the story. Because - as I'm sure you all know - just last week an airplane very much like the planes flying over during the start of the Angus & Julia Stone concert, took off from Schiphol airport, intending to take the people on it to Kuala Lumpur. Instead, it never got that far.
It's hard to describe the impact that the tragedy of this air crash has had on The Netherlands. The holes left by the 193 Dutch people who perished on that flight go beyond their own communities and their own social circles in a way. The stories are everywhere. Everyone seems to know someone who was on that flight, or if not, at least know someone who did - even if only vaguely so. I'm no different in that. Luckily I'm in the latter category. The stories coming from the crash site, especially in those first few days, are harrowing. Bodies falling from the sky, right into peoples houses and gardens. Backyards and farm fields gruesomely decorated by bodies, limbs and plane wreckage. The cruel senselessness of it all. How entire families are gone. People missing their parents, their children, their siblings. Their relatives, friends or colleagues, their neighbours. Stories like those of a girl I shared a class with many years ago and her new husband, narrowly avoiding death by a simple change of flight so they wouldn't be as jet-lagged on Monday going back to work after their honeymoon. But then if you really think about it, that also means there's probably a story of two other people who took their seats, maybe also due to a last-minute decision to change flights. Happily boarding because they caught an earlier flight than planned and would now be at their destination sooner. Not knowing they would never arrive, but instead end up in a field in the Ukraine, surrounded by wreckage and bodies of people that - like themselves - have stopped breathing. Everything just stopped.
Yesterday was a day of national mourning, as the first 40 bodies of the 298 victims arrived in The Netherlands. The silence throughout the unloading of all those caskets was beautiful in all its subdued sadness. The official nationwide minute's silence and the images of the long line of funeral cars on an empty highway lined by hundreds of people paying their respects after that sober ceremony at Eindhoven airport was impressive. The fact that an even longer line of funeral cars made that same journey today, and that similar motorcades will travel again and again across that highway in the next few days until all bodies found are in The Netherlands for identification, is just tragic. It's a kind of tragedy we usually don't get to see like this. Because it happens somewhere else under similar but different circumstances, to people who are so very similar to us yet seem so different. Two more planes went down only yesterday and today for instance. Or take the recent Gaza attacks by Israeli ground troops, which have cost more than double the amount of civilian lives so far than the air crash. Innocent people caught up in a war they didn't choose to be in. Just like those on flight MH17. Yesterday's display of mourning for the 298 people who died in a war that was never theirs - the sheer senselessness and tragedy of it all - was impressive. It brought the devastating effects of war, grief and unexpected loss right to our doorstep and into our lives. And I feel for the grieving, the ones who lost loved ones and are now left to make sense of something that will probably never really make any sense to them at all. When the dust has settled, the news crews have left and those only indirectly affected by this tragedy have gone on with their lives, these people will still feel the emptiness left behind, will still be picking up the pieces of their shattered lives bit by bit, trying to go on in some new way too. Yet I also can't help but feel that maybe it's something we need to see more when it happens somewhere else too, to people who are so very similar to us yet seem so different. Just to remind ourselves tragedies like this happen on some scale and in some shape or form almost every day. To remind ourselves that some things transcend our individual differences. To remind ourselves we're all human.
At the end of the Angus and Julia Stone concert, the low rumbling sounds of the airplane engines had long ceased. As they played their very last song, everyone stood in absolute silence for those few minutes, united in listening to a boy and a girl on guitar. Last Thursday, the engines of flight MH17 ceased to rumble forever. And as the 298 victims make their very last trip home, we stand in silence too. United in mourning in some big or small way those who lost their lives in that tragedy and, hopefully, united in being reminded of our transcendent humanity.
All my love to you all.
xx
And the ones we left behind"
~ Angus & Julia Stone ~
Just over a week ago, I thought I would write my next blog about big jet planes and live music. I went to an Angus & Julia Stone concert early July in the 'Amsterdamse Bos' open air theatre, which is situated in a forest right next to Schiphol airport. Usually the nearby runway isn't used during a concert, but due to an emergency repair to one of the other runways, airplanes were still taking off and flying low over the theatre when Angus & Julia started playing. So for the first 4 songs or so of the concert, planes were adding their low rumbling engine sounds to the music every few minutes. Big jet planes taking people to far away places. I didn't get around to writing that blog then. And then last Thursday happened, and the live music part of the story doesn't seem quite as relevant as the airplane part of the story. Because - as I'm sure you all know - just last week an airplane very much like the planes flying over during the start of the Angus & Julia Stone concert, took off from Schiphol airport, intending to take the people on it to Kuala Lumpur. Instead, it never got that far.
It's hard to describe the impact that the tragedy of this air crash has had on The Netherlands. The holes left by the 193 Dutch people who perished on that flight go beyond their own communities and their own social circles in a way. The stories are everywhere. Everyone seems to know someone who was on that flight, or if not, at least know someone who did - even if only vaguely so. I'm no different in that. Luckily I'm in the latter category. The stories coming from the crash site, especially in those first few days, are harrowing. Bodies falling from the sky, right into peoples houses and gardens. Backyards and farm fields gruesomely decorated by bodies, limbs and plane wreckage. The cruel senselessness of it all. How entire families are gone. People missing their parents, their children, their siblings. Their relatives, friends or colleagues, their neighbours. Stories like those of a girl I shared a class with many years ago and her new husband, narrowly avoiding death by a simple change of flight so they wouldn't be as jet-lagged on Monday going back to work after their honeymoon. But then if you really think about it, that also means there's probably a story of two other people who took their seats, maybe also due to a last-minute decision to change flights. Happily boarding because they caught an earlier flight than planned and would now be at their destination sooner. Not knowing they would never arrive, but instead end up in a field in the Ukraine, surrounded by wreckage and bodies of people that - like themselves - have stopped breathing. Everything just stopped.
Yesterday was a day of national mourning, as the first 40 bodies of the 298 victims arrived in The Netherlands. The silence throughout the unloading of all those caskets was beautiful in all its subdued sadness. The official nationwide minute's silence and the images of the long line of funeral cars on an empty highway lined by hundreds of people paying their respects after that sober ceremony at Eindhoven airport was impressive. The fact that an even longer line of funeral cars made that same journey today, and that similar motorcades will travel again and again across that highway in the next few days until all bodies found are in The Netherlands for identification, is just tragic. It's a kind of tragedy we usually don't get to see like this. Because it happens somewhere else under similar but different circumstances, to people who are so very similar to us yet seem so different. Two more planes went down only yesterday and today for instance. Or take the recent Gaza attacks by Israeli ground troops, which have cost more than double the amount of civilian lives so far than the air crash. Innocent people caught up in a war they didn't choose to be in. Just like those on flight MH17. Yesterday's display of mourning for the 298 people who died in a war that was never theirs - the sheer senselessness and tragedy of it all - was impressive. It brought the devastating effects of war, grief and unexpected loss right to our doorstep and into our lives. And I feel for the grieving, the ones who lost loved ones and are now left to make sense of something that will probably never really make any sense to them at all. When the dust has settled, the news crews have left and those only indirectly affected by this tragedy have gone on with their lives, these people will still feel the emptiness left behind, will still be picking up the pieces of their shattered lives bit by bit, trying to go on in some new way too. Yet I also can't help but feel that maybe it's something we need to see more when it happens somewhere else too, to people who are so very similar to us yet seem so different. Just to remind ourselves tragedies like this happen on some scale and in some shape or form almost every day. To remind ourselves that some things transcend our individual differences. To remind ourselves we're all human.
At the end of the Angus and Julia Stone concert, the low rumbling sounds of the airplane engines had long ceased. As they played their very last song, everyone stood in absolute silence for those few minutes, united in listening to a boy and a girl on guitar. Last Thursday, the engines of flight MH17 ceased to rumble forever. And as the 298 victims make their very last trip home, we stand in silence too. United in mourning in some big or small way those who lost their lives in that tragedy and, hopefully, united in being reminded of our transcendent humanity.
All my love to you all.
xx
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
