Lamenting the heart and mind that link certain activities with certain people. When one is gone, it's hard to remember why you loved the other. There's still much to enjoy but the ache makes it all bittersweet.
benoit blanc living across from a retired nate and sophie and instantly having beef with nate. they keep inviting each other over for dinner (sophie and phillip get along fabulously) and dinner keeps turning into a furious battle of wills as nate and benoit argue over courts of law, and more importantly what to do when such systems fail individuals. sophie and phillip blithely continue discussing what broadway production they might catch next over the sound of two brilliant minds whirring at 200 miles an hour
nate and sophie insist they dont have any children, but at irregular times of year and any hour of the night, they are visited by three young people. benoit manages to waylay the one named 'hardison' by the lifts, once; phillip catches 'eliot' out in the hallway grumpily fixing the doorbell to nate and sophie's apartment a few months later. the third, however, they've only ever glimpsed as a flash of a high ponytail, or squeezed between the other two, blocking her lithe frame from view.
(some nights they hear a yip of delight followed by a metallic zzzip going straight down past their windows, but that probably has nothing to do with anything)
sometimes, after cases that dont mete out the justice benoit knows the world deserves, or when a rich asshole has enough money and power up their sleeves to get away, despite it all, nate and sophie like to come by with dessert and sherry, and stay later than usual, until the whole affair entire is unravelled. a few weeks, sometimes months later, the inevitable happens - the rich asshole's web of lies pulls taut, exposing them to the authorities and the world in an almost ridiculous set of circumstances.
benoit likes to think of it as divine justice. phillip has his own suspicions.
“First season of LEVERAGE - so he's 21 years old - he shows me his watch designs. I'm expecting, y' know, celebrity strap branding or faces. No, it's engineering schematics of GEARS and shit. Pages of them. Even then, there were none so cool.” - John Rogers
many people have said it but bears repeating again:
Palestinian liberation calls for a 1 state solution under which all people are equal under both under the law and in practice.
In order to have peace the genocide, apartheid, and occupation must end. Settler colonialism must end. Second class citizenry must end. All Palestinians imprisoned must be released. Reparations must be made to Palestinians who have been affected by both current events and historical, from the Nakba in 1948 to today. Everyone who participated in the facilitation of the apartheid, and the violence of the apartheid and occupation required to maintain the oppressive regime, must be held accountable. Palestinians must be granted the right to return to their homes.
The idea that Palestinian liberation = carrying out a genocide on Israelis is nothing more than baseless, racist, orientalist fearmongering (and, to an extent, pure projection) that serves to justify the current genocidal regime and the apartheid having been maintained for decades. One people's freedom does not threaten another people. People are fearmongering over a hypothetical scenario (the same fearmongering used in South Africa; both during the reconstruction era following the abolition of slavery & also against abolitionists while slavery was still legal in the United States; in regards to the North American indigenous population; and so on) while an actual genocide is going on.
the only way to real actual peace, safety, and security is through the complete liberation of the Palestinian people, not the continued maintenance of the current regime or the apartheid that led to this current moment in time. apartheid is inherently violent; oppression is inherently violent. colonialism is inherently violent. if YOUR 'safety' is dependent on the oppression, displacement, and murder of OTHER PEOPLE then your conditions are not and will never be safe.