At the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), in Los Angeles, a gigantic, carnivorous flag with torn ends was waving in an artificial wind created by enormous propellers.
There were no visitors at the exhibition. For a while I thought that in all this huge space I was totally alone. But soon I noticed two figures in black torn dresses, moving slowly, in semi-darkness, desperately clinging to the walls. Backs bent, they passed by the bookstore right near the place where someone had put a small sign on the wall that said, "I cannot breath!"
Most likely it was a performance, a desperate protest action of one man and one woman, a performance against this giant all-devouring flag.
"I cannot breath!" A man shouted before he died, before he was murdered by the regime.
"I cannot write!" I thought. Which to me was almost the same as not being able to respire.
***
It was the first time in many years that I had missed my column, my essays, for several weeks.
Even when I was arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Kenya, in Senegal, I still managed to write.
I managed to write after a deranged, evangelical and fascist preacher paid hotel staff to poison me in the Indonesian city of Surabaya.
I wrote in many warzones and desperate slums, from Iraq to Mindanao, from Haiti to Marshall Islands.
But I couldn't write in the United States of America. Not one single line, not one word. Not this time.
Comment: There have been so many financial warnings, from so many places, looking at so many indicators, that it will likely be this year that we see a major downturn.