Geoffrey Armes: Nixzmary

It's not so much the death that saddens me, as the manner of the life endured. If you are not familiar with her story, please take a look at some of the links here. Small children are the most vulnerable people, little more than a summation of their inheritance and the environment in which they live. Nixzmary's life was not one any child should have been called to live.

So here you have a piece of music I've slowly crafted in the days following her death, once I was able to pick myself up from grieving and remember myself and my purpose, who I am, and start to think about what, if anything, I could do in response.

This music is available as a download on an 'honours' system. You get the music, and then you donate, to a charity that works to alleviate suffering amongst children.

Cases like Nixzmary are at the extreme end of child-abuse, but one consistent factor in so many of these situations, even at the median, is poverty, and another is ignorance. Meaning that parents are overloaded, under stress, at their wits end, going under and completely unable to cope, least of all with their own suffering and perhaps difficult and unable to cope progeny.

I've picked the Teen Moms Project, because it seeks to address those very issues, by supporting young mothers in their efforts to stay in school as well as raise their families, thereby hopefully becoming better educated, more competent mothers, as well as mothers who are able, in the short-term, to fiscally provide for their children. Hopefully all this adds up to mothers who can give emotionally and love meaningfully, their children.

If for some reason, Teen Moms or Susila Dharma doesn't work for you, then give to another children's aid charity, but please give, for the memory of Nixzmary (and the so many like her), and to honour my intention with this music.

Nixzmary

So I lay here in the half-light
Watching the colours change in the cold night
Sky or
On the wall
And even if I know I pretend not to know
Who am I?

You can call my name, or use it as you like
It makes no difference now
It doesn't make much difference now
As I've wandered beyond your strike into the half-light
All those lights that embroider this city
Ain't gonna make much difference now

I've endured a few beatings too
Approached in the innocent belief that
This is how it's supposed to be
That the rod is the road to becoming free

I lay in limbo
The city froze
Numb
Until finally I'm
Entrusted to that which is
The custodian of the mystery it does not understand
Then it rains,
The city weeps
I see my mother
I see my stepfather
I see my daughter
I see and stand steadfast
I cannot lie
The trades ply
The weekend banalities
As I lay at the limits