Author S. K. Nicholas

There was a terrorist attack in London yesterday. Some dumb fuck ran down a load of people on Westminster Bridge and then stabbed a policeman to death. They shot the guy soon after- I saw the photo of him lying on the pavement with pistols pointing at his prone body. I’m a bit young to remember the IRA bombings, but I can recall the tube and bus attacks of 7/7 and the murder of Lee Rigby, the soldier they ran over and then attacked with machetes. His killers ranted on film while waving their bloody hands around telling those watching that those in charge didn’t care about them. And then they were captured, and now they’re doing life in prison. You could spend a whole week moralising- could write line after line about how they’re so washed up and dead, and how we as a nation will never surrender. But the older I get, the more this kinda thing feels like Groundhog Day. It happens, and always will. People are deranged. They’re cruel. And for as long as we exist, there are those among us who will inflict because that’s just how it is. You can change the mind of a single man, but not that of mankind. You can pin it all on ISIS, or maybe migrants, the Jews, Muslims, but it’s useless. It can’t be confined to races or religions. The pain and torture we commit exists within us a species. Most of us are pretty cool cats, we know the score. But it’s in our chemistry to fuck up. I said it once before, can’t remember if it was in a blog or just in passing, but humans are a mess of wonder. We can dazzle with beauty and compassion, and then in the blink of an eye, we can disgust with acts that know no limit. You can rage all you want, but this will continue to happen just as it has since the dawn of time. Remember that scene from 2001 A Space Odyssey? Where the ape picks up a bone and kills one of his own? We rise, and we fall. We are beautiful and perverse. We are the light and the dark and will continue to be until our kind turns to dust. It’s just how it is. I believe in love, and I stand for peace, but this life we know is based on injustice. It’s the nature of man, and no matter how advanced our species becomes, we will never be able to escape what lies beneath.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com