I’ve just been pondering, for an hour or maybe two — I can’t quite remember anymore as it’s late and I’m tired — about all the things I’ve done in my life. No distinctions made, just all the things I’ve managed to pack into twenty-two years of existence. I’ve stood atop cess-pool covers, barraging the myriad mystical creatures of my mind with my mighty bubble gun. I’ve fell in love. I’ve gone to summer camp. I’ve broken a bone. I had a dog.
I loved that fucking dog.
He died a few years ago, that mutt was my best friend. I know it’s cliche, but they really don’t judge you, he was always happy to see me even if I hadn’t been the best caretaker. I hadn’t been there much for the last few years he was alive. I’ve always felt like I let him down somehow. He wandered off one day into the woods and never came back — though I think that might be one of those comfortable lies my family has decided to tell me to help me deal with the fact that they put him down. He was old, he had a good life.
I loved that fucking dog.
His name was Randy, we played a lot. I talked to him, he listened. I would tell him my troubles and he would advise me that the proper solution was to feed him large quantities of human food, as it made him happy to receive it. By making him happy, I would be happy, and all would be right with the world.
I don’t know why I’m talking about him, this whole thing is half experiment in free-writing, half two-in-the-morning rant, half cocked and half shot-off and who the hell knows what kind of fractions are going on here.
I just miss my dog. I feel a little alone sometimes, I think we all do. We all have a friend we hold close and lose, a companion which leaves us for whatever reason. Maybe they move, maybe they just fall out of touch, maybe they die.
December seventh gets a lot of press. Before 9/11, it was the last time we had been attacked — really attacked — as a country. No one ever talks about December eighth.
I think it’s an interesting thing, that as a culture we are so good at remembering the initial shock of tragedy, but not the long pain of recovery. Look at 9/11, we are horrified by the images of burning towers against a cobalt sky, but we don’t think about the hundreds of people who were mutilated by the falling debris, the people who had (and have) chronic breathing issues from the dust. No, those people don’t seem to matter — only instant death is important, not slow suffering.
Look at Hurricane Katrina, people remember the shocking images of houses submerged and debris-filled-former-streets. People forget that, even now, New Orleans is a broken city. Many still have not recovered from the long term effects of the Hurricane.
No one thinks about the soldiers who survived the attack, the ones who had no cherry-red-lipstick "M" etched on their forehead by inexperienced nurses, overwhelmed by the gore. No one seems to remember these men and women who were too hurt to survive but not hurt enough allieviated from their pain by morphine.
"M"
Why don’t we react to this psychic stress? The 3000 who died in 9/11 — horrible, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in the Second Oil War — who cares? The hundreds who died in Katrina’s onslaught — horrible, the thousands who died in the botched reaction, due to unsafe, unsanitary conditions — that’s just fine.
I recently read a quote from "A People’s History of the United States" by Howard Zinn (I fear I’ve just tagged myself an uncivilized radical, I am okay with this. I’m unkempt, unkind, and proud. I am caring, I am human). In which he talks about a man, another professor, he of Columbian (as in, Columbus) history, and the founding of the new world. This professor buried one line about the horror Colombus and those who followed him cast upon the Arawaks and other Native tribes. Slavery, Deathcamps, abject slaughter as livestock to an abattoir. He buried it in one line, in a page extolling dear old Chris’ virtues. Zinn responds by noting that this historian didn’t try to hide the truth, or lie about it, he just tried to make it unimportant.
Why do we seek to make the ugly things unimportant? As horrible as 9/11 was, it wasn’t that ugly. What was (and is) truly ugly is the flurry of death it gave painful birth too.
3000 deaths were enough.
Some say America as a power is fading, that other nations will soon take their turn as leaders on the global stage, I welcome the loss of this mantle of supposed responsibility (nothing we have done as a nation can ever be confused with any notion of being "responsible"). We are a broken nation, a broken culture, we have been for a long time. We think we are great but we are not. We hide from the ugliness, we hide from the bitter memories of our youth. We hide from the death, and genocide, and evil that we have done.
The Civil War
The Trail of Tears
The Massacre of Natives in General
The Corporate-Sponsored, Uncle Sam Approved Wars for Profit.
What are we?
Hiroshima
Who are we?
Nagasaki
We are a broken people. We are too hurt to survive, but not hurt enough for the cherry red
"M"