What I Get and What I Don't Get
I have a very morbid sense of history. It's my upbringing, I suppose. When you are a child of a Civil War buff you tend to skew your historical thinking toward conflict, bloodshed and conspiracy. My father was not the re-enactment type. He was the high brow collector type. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I looked at the living room in which I had watched countelss episodes of You Can't Do That on Television and later The Kids in the Hall and Monty Python and realized just what a gory environment it was. We had lovely log bookends with impressively rendered carvings of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis on them. There was a bust of Lincoln, a replica sword, a rifle, a definitive collection of Civil War books, and paintings. These were not tame mid-nineteenth century portraits but passionate and gory depictions of Civil War battles. There were horses toppling over helpless wounded soldiers, bodies both living and dead, cannon fire, smoke and swords poised for attack. My friends would recoil slightly when first entering our living room, but I thought nothing of it. Why should I when I had spent my formative years watching documentaries, trouncing through battlefields, and listening to terrifying tales of the bloody means necessary to win a conflict and gruesome surgical techniques? This is life. People do horrible things to one another and it is our duty to be preoccupied with that.
It then stands to reason that I have this compulsion to mark certain dates on the calendar. It is my annual cylce of grief and deep sadness. From Easter to a slough of dates in April (MLK Jr's death on April 4, Oklahoma City on April 19, Columbine on April 20, and that's not even mentioning the battle at Gettysburg) to a certain ex-boyfriend's birthday (he did a particulalry interesting tap dance on my soul) all the way to September. You know where I am headed. I don't want to go there either but the dates keep flying off the calendar whether I want them to or not.
I can't, and won't recount for you what happened that day, to me or anyone else. What I want is to grasp at these threads of thought that float through my head each year around this time. We are all trying to account for ourselves in some way, to justify our survival or our anger. I don't know if it is normal or not, but I am not particularly angry. I would describe myself as psychically wounded, although that just sounds stupid. I don't know how else to describe it, but I am certain I am not the only one. I can't be the only one who bursts into tears when confronted with an image- any image- of the WTC Towers. I can't be the only one who feels this ripping and gnawing in my chest accompanied by a scream that never leaves me. No. In that I am not alone.
It is not particularly difficult for me to imagine the circumstances that would have to exist for me to want to destroy life. I could blame that on my acting training- it is second nature for me to search for circumstances and motivations. I feel that anyone who doesn't understand that choice is not being honest with themselves. They aren't trying to understand because to understand would be to confront the horror that we are all- each and every one of us- capable of inflicting upon our fellow man. To understand is to find yourself in some small way responsible for the state of the world- responsible for certain circumstances we would rather ignore. To understand is to open up a wide range of choices but it does not satisfy any thirst for vengeance. Everyone wants to be "right". The only problem is that when everyone is right it is only a matter of time before everyone is dead.
People who kill are not happy people. People who want to inflict pain on others are in a lot of pain themselves. This I completely understand. It is a very simple truth to grasp. What I don't get are t-shirts, bumper stickers, and the otherwise booming trade in pain. After all, it is our duty as American citizens to consume and while we grieve we must resolve to consume more. What prompts us to buy? Reminders of horror. Is a t-shirt or a decal for your car reading "These Colors Don't Run" the best way to express our grief? Or is it just a product of the blind consumerism that allows us to cut ourselves off from other human beings?
Lately, I've bee screaming at our house. Sullivan gets into his whiny, demanding mode and I have given myself permission to be irritated by it. I don't like the way I react to his whining, but ignoring how much it felt like an indictment of my skills as a mother was eating me up inside. I feel better having acknowledged the fact that his demands on me are now excessive but, clearly, I need to find a better way to respond to him. My yelling only leads him to yell back and we both just end up pissed and hurt. (I AM going somewhere with this, bear with me.) So, I have been talking to Sullivan about choices. Even though I may be feeling pissed off, hurt or frustrated I have a choice about how I behave. I can take the easy route. I can scream, throw a fit and just pick up the pieces after the fact which usually has me feeling hurt and angry for a long time afterward. Or, I can take a deep breath, tell you that I am hurt, angry or whatever and deal with the real situation and actually solve the problem. Which would we rather do?
I know many of you out there think that the only way to meet force is with force. This philosophy assumes that the heart and mind of our "enemy" is unknowable and that the only way to triumph is to beat them down. Unfortunately, those who are beaten down usually rise up against their perceived oppressor. A dog who gets trained with a rolled up newspaper will submit- but for how long? If he's got any spunk at all, he'll kill you in your sleep. I hope he takes that stupid fucking t-shirt with him.
I'm sure that last comment will put me on some list some where. I love this country. I love New York. But I don't think we, as a nation, are actively searching for choices that would solve problems- we're just looking to maintain our status as the biggest kid on the playground. We've staked out our spot on the monkey bars and think our size will save us every time. That's a fucking lie and don't you believe it. Not for one second.
It then stands to reason that I have this compulsion to mark certain dates on the calendar. It is my annual cylce of grief and deep sadness. From Easter to a slough of dates in April (MLK Jr's death on April 4, Oklahoma City on April 19, Columbine on April 20, and that's not even mentioning the battle at Gettysburg) to a certain ex-boyfriend's birthday (he did a particulalry interesting tap dance on my soul) all the way to September. You know where I am headed. I don't want to go there either but the dates keep flying off the calendar whether I want them to or not.
I can't, and won't recount for you what happened that day, to me or anyone else. What I want is to grasp at these threads of thought that float through my head each year around this time. We are all trying to account for ourselves in some way, to justify our survival or our anger. I don't know if it is normal or not, but I am not particularly angry. I would describe myself as psychically wounded, although that just sounds stupid. I don't know how else to describe it, but I am certain I am not the only one. I can't be the only one who bursts into tears when confronted with an image- any image- of the WTC Towers. I can't be the only one who feels this ripping and gnawing in my chest accompanied by a scream that never leaves me. No. In that I am not alone.
It is not particularly difficult for me to imagine the circumstances that would have to exist for me to want to destroy life. I could blame that on my acting training- it is second nature for me to search for circumstances and motivations. I feel that anyone who doesn't understand that choice is not being honest with themselves. They aren't trying to understand because to understand would be to confront the horror that we are all- each and every one of us- capable of inflicting upon our fellow man. To understand is to find yourself in some small way responsible for the state of the world- responsible for certain circumstances we would rather ignore. To understand is to open up a wide range of choices but it does not satisfy any thirst for vengeance. Everyone wants to be "right". The only problem is that when everyone is right it is only a matter of time before everyone is dead.
People who kill are not happy people. People who want to inflict pain on others are in a lot of pain themselves. This I completely understand. It is a very simple truth to grasp. What I don't get are t-shirts, bumper stickers, and the otherwise booming trade in pain. After all, it is our duty as American citizens to consume and while we grieve we must resolve to consume more. What prompts us to buy? Reminders of horror. Is a t-shirt or a decal for your car reading "These Colors Don't Run" the best way to express our grief? Or is it just a product of the blind consumerism that allows us to cut ourselves off from other human beings?
Lately, I've bee screaming at our house. Sullivan gets into his whiny, demanding mode and I have given myself permission to be irritated by it. I don't like the way I react to his whining, but ignoring how much it felt like an indictment of my skills as a mother was eating me up inside. I feel better having acknowledged the fact that his demands on me are now excessive but, clearly, I need to find a better way to respond to him. My yelling only leads him to yell back and we both just end up pissed and hurt. (I AM going somewhere with this, bear with me.) So, I have been talking to Sullivan about choices. Even though I may be feeling pissed off, hurt or frustrated I have a choice about how I behave. I can take the easy route. I can scream, throw a fit and just pick up the pieces after the fact which usually has me feeling hurt and angry for a long time afterward. Or, I can take a deep breath, tell you that I am hurt, angry or whatever and deal with the real situation and actually solve the problem. Which would we rather do?
I know many of you out there think that the only way to meet force is with force. This philosophy assumes that the heart and mind of our "enemy" is unknowable and that the only way to triumph is to beat them down. Unfortunately, those who are beaten down usually rise up against their perceived oppressor. A dog who gets trained with a rolled up newspaper will submit- but for how long? If he's got any spunk at all, he'll kill you in your sleep. I hope he takes that stupid fucking t-shirt with him.
I'm sure that last comment will put me on some list some where. I love this country. I love New York. But I don't think we, as a nation, are actively searching for choices that would solve problems- we're just looking to maintain our status as the biggest kid on the playground. We've staked out our spot on the monkey bars and think our size will save us every time. That's a fucking lie and don't you believe it. Not for one second.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 3:43 AM
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