I am writing this in east berlin. it is raining softly. the skies, however, look like they are about to clear. there is a hum of traffic from a nearby street. from my balcony I can see four silent staring statues, perched on the roof next to mine, dark with soot.

“I’d rather be second in truth than first in beauty” – Diego Valesquez

****
I am crestfallen. And sick. I am staying at an Amsterdam apartment of a friend of mine. I have been sleeping, riding her bike around, smoking.

An international tribunal redefined the borders of a disputed oil-rich region between north and south Sudan on Wednesday. The ruling seeks to defuse a thorny issue in the 2005 peace agreement ending one of Africa’s longest civil wars by splitting the contested zone between the two sides.

This Wednesday, July 22, peace in Sudan will face a great test. Many speculate that if the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is not respected, if it faces barriers to its implementation (and Abyei is its greatest), then armistice will be almost impossible to broker in Darfur, and the whole region will once again descend into a war from which it only recently emerged.

“Suppose you’re walking the streets of a poor country with a treatment for malaria in your pocket—you don’t have malaria—and you pass someone on the side of the road who has malaria and who’s feverish. Would you give him that treatment? I think for most people the answer is yes. We’re just part of that greater thing that is life, and all life wants is to go on. Life wants to explore this ecological niche on Earth. This is life caring for itself, and that’s why we do it.”