Back From Black (A Hopeful Designer Rants)

As I mentioned before, mermants stands as my online scrapbook of what inspires me, what makes my creative juices flowing and what I'm up to in terms of personal and professional projects. I usually try to stay away from sorrowful events and any reference to anything uncomfortably unpleasant because let's face it; most forms of negativity are creativity killers. 

As a universal observer, I usually comment and complain about what bugs me in an unsuppressed manner. Lately, though, I have remained blogmute for a while, so I thought that it'd be a great opportunity to break the blogpost-block and re-commence blogging with this post.

If I were asked to put a label on this month, I'd just go with "Black". 

July 11th was probably the most catastrophic day in my country's modern history since the Turkish invasion back in 1974. To make a long and painful story short: The explosion of a 98 shipping container munition cargo killed 13 people and rendered the island of Cyprus crippled on multiple levels. The cargo was confiscated from a Syria-bound ship back in February of 2009 and was since criminally and irresponsibly sitting exposed to all weather elements only a few hundred meters from the island's main power plant, at a naval base. 

The aftermath is, well… you do the math: Harsh! The power plant which was covering more than 60% of the island's electricity needs is now, for the most part, out of order and the water desalination units on the island will be, if they're not already, affected.  

So the officials who were bragging that Cyprus would come out of the recession able-bodied, should reconsider and take some actions. I'm not sure how the minimum repairing cost of the station (which by the way, elevates up to €2,000,000,000) will be covered, or how we will avoid the third-world country moniker, which is very threateningly lurking around the corner, but don't shoot me for stating this: I'm feeling timidly optimistic.

As if the local grief wasn't enough, we woke up to horrible news this Saturday coming from Norway, where the tragic outcome of the events was inevitably compared to those of World War II for Norway. I know, that's not how 2011 is supposed to be and one can't help but wonder: How can people do this to other people? How can some people be irresponsible or neglectful enough to allow the death of others and refuse to take responsibility, or at least show some sympathy? How can a person decide that a certain group of people does not deserve to live and personally sees that they cease to do so? How can people find pleasure in seeing and documenting other people's deterioration and death, and still live to talk bad about them after they're gone? Yes, that was for Amy Winehouse, and all the troubled people who deserve and need our support and guidance instead of our frowning, isolating and judgmental attitude.

Call me poetically light-minded, call me plain-out delusional, or just call me stupidly stubborn for never being able to retract my initial statement; but I still have that hopeful feeling, that positive gleam which bears a promise that things will change. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow. Heck! It might not even be in five years from now, but I do feel that change will come. After all, when I decided to name my creative entity "IN PEOPLE WE TRUST" it wasn't because I don't trust in God; because I do! It was because I really trust and believe in people and in everything good & kind each and every one of us bear inside.