On feeling small…

…it may be true to say that a person never feels quite as small and insignificant as when they are confronted by the grand historical ebb and flow within which they quite accidentally find themselves. I am watching developments in Europe and Ukraine and with an almost desperate sense of powerlessness and inability to effect positive change into the turbulent complexity of this conflict that might quite easily reach out and touch – or injure – all if us, no matter where we are. Staring down an avenue of trees, green lawns, meandering pathways and people going about their lunchtime activities and I can’t help but feel hollow, dissociated and alienated from people and place. Does a threat of war always alienate ourselves in this way? Is war always and already a violent act of alienation, difference, dissonance? Am I the only person feeling this way?