On Days Like These

On days like these, when the caprice of a handful of men threatens to extinguish all life and all joy, I can only hope for lucid, human encounters like the one I had today, in a corner of an art gallery, with a print from Francisco Goya's series Los desastres de la guerra [The Disasters of War].

Two starving women lie on the ground, one near death while a third kneels by their side and offers a cup to the dying woman. — *Fig 1. "De qué sirve una taza?" ["What good is a cup?"], ca. 1810–20, on display at the Victoria Art Gallery.*

A reminder that we have no need for more Napoleons in this world, a desperate wail echoed from the lives needlessly lost to "caprichos enfáticos" ["emphatic caprices"], as Goya called it, and a testament to a shared sense of horror in the face of a relentless unleashing of war and violence that spans centuries. Goya's prints are as necessary and vital now as they were when he first crafted them as a witness.

- Andrea