4.16.13 Our Grapes of Wrath

I am standing at a river older than human conflict, experiencing its succor, contemplating the shock of such sadness. Tragedy. And then all that confusing territory between 'profiling' and using common sense to consider possible individuals or groups as candidates for the violence in Boston.

The nature of the contents and intended impact of the bombs difficult to imagine. 

One question being “Who are you to actually see the world in such a way, be in such a state internally or with others, to really think out how to create a bomb that would operate in this very personal, specific fashion? “

At the moment I learned, I was sitting w. a friend whose kid goes to college next door in Boston. Whose kids and partner were all texting each other...to say the kid was fine, the school shut down, and how it was going. One of them from Israel, so how accustomed they have intermittently been to this, versus most of us, and our country, which has been conducting our business, our observation or ignoring of genocides in other countries, the impact of our economic and military choices upon others, for years and years. Our ‘military conflicts’ or choices or wars in other countries far far away, so that we have for the most part always felt both so safe, and so insulated from any impact upon us, Any retaliation. Not that we know the origin of this violence. Or wish to make useless assumption.

And now it seems we have people of all ages hunting each other, even hunting little children. We have people from other countries, such as a friend of mine in Germany, whose citizens  often ask them if 1. REALLY there are that many GUNS in the U.S., and again, 2. WHY?....(and 3. why are our medicines and medical care so much more expensive than theirs? 4. Why do we as a nation resent ensuring that our own people are provided for with necessities, versus being proud about providing, The way so many countries are? These are the questions this U.S. citizen most often faces...)

And I am thinking about The Oklahoma Bombing and 9.11 and so many ways so many venture forth to express, directly or indirectly, their rage, or boil over or impose their belief system or insist upon others seeing things as they do…I am contemplating this hobby of insisting that the only validity of our vantage point …lies in the agreement or acquiescence of others. And otherwise, why not haul off and use that gun or go hunting humans to make….a point. Or....feel better for a little bit??? My my.

I am thinking of how others get off on conflict. Get off on the impact of their ‘power’. This 'power' so reminding me of the 'power' of rape. Rape, once again, not being about sex but about power and dominance, among other things.

Our country looks at everything it feels like looking at, save the actual possible origins of the wrath of people. Not that we are making assumptions about who chose to plan this assault of carnage, but aren't  you also wondering who spent careful time looking over choices of bombs to make, and then carefully chose these bombs with nails and ball bearings…and then carefully put them together. And then carefully placed them in sites for …I don’t know, would you say ‘maximum impact”?  And then had that uber moment…..of detonation. I am trying to imagine how you get…from here…to there. I am trying to imagine what they got out of it, and what they are deriving from it right at this moment. And how very sad and twisted and old and tired this human wrath is.

And in terms of the wrath of 'our own', well, my town seems at times chock full of hard working people who are very very very very racist. Who HATE our president and our governor because they are black.  Truly. And they teach it to their children. Spoon fed. Undigested, un-thought-out, just spoon fed and taken up by the pre-adolescents and teenagers of frustrated, clue-less divorced moms describing to me their beloved kids, and the racist diatribe that is now part of their young selves, spoon fed from the angry other parent.   A class of humans hated not because they have big feet or like burgers or oldies music or are fiscal conservatives or back-to-the-landers, but because of the color of their skin. So no matter what these politicians/leaders/individuals do or say, it is meaningless, to these people, because it all hinges on the color of that skin. Ollie-ollie-in-free. 

In our nation, we have such a rise in Nazi/skinhead activity. We have such reactivity with regards to women and their rights and their position in society, such passionate consternation of what that consists of and how on earth to manage with differing views and convictions. 

And this week we collectively will find our brethren itching to pin the tail on anyone who seems Middle Eastern or any number of other fill-in-the-blanks qualifications for suspicion, for exclusion. This is going to be tough, either til the police determine who perpetuated this crime, or possibly, after. 

Difference. Violence. Assumption. Violation. Power.

And now, here, we, shocked, having lost once again our imagined sense of inviolate right to safety, without a clue as to whether this relates to errant passionate hatred and projection of values via violence, or our ways in other countries, or even our own towns; here we are with the grapes of someone’s wrath. With innocents maimed or killed, on an annual traditional  sunny day of excitement and questing and celebration.

Here is to our grief for the individuals who experienced this, who lost lives, who are traumatized, who are injured.

Here is, ever once again, to those who, heedless of their own safety, ran to do whatever was necessary to help others, the antithesis of the act of violence. 

Here is to the loss, now, of the sense of safety that once was and is no longer at The Boston Marathon.  And, in part, in this city.

Which many many places in the world, whether we have noticed or not, have experienced in the past, which we as a nation often are too busy to take note of, or send regards, or grieve for, and now, we here do share in this place.

Here is to the irretrievable strength and messy remarkable brilliance and efforts of humans to investigate or argue or debate or study and consider this phenomena.

Here is to those who are missing sleep and striving with every ounce of intelligence and perception to gather clues and information and leads and find who made this choice and perpetuated this act.

And , too, here is to the distressed, and I am imagining, desperate, type of perspective  that gives birth to the sense that this sort of violence is somehow a good idea. In my hopes and prayers that they can grow and change and find another way of expressing their grievance, their sense of hopeless rage, without coming to the conclusion that this....this....is their answer. All of our brethren, all over the world, whomever they be, finding themselves in this tenuous situation.

In hopes and prayers that as humans, together, we can somehow reach across and find ways to be heard, to hear, and to come up with new ways of honoring difference and forging new compromise, in crisis or within the every day.