Living by the Sword

Note: In response to the recent slayings In New Town, Connecticut and the subsequent announcement by the National rifle Association, I am posting this story, written in 1997 even before the Columbine massacre. If the NRA has its way, school guards will be armed in order to defend students against violence. Children, living in fear and exposed to violence as the solution to fear, will certainly not grow up to be balanced citizens and healthy adults. Children in war-torn countries have a portion of their psyche, their hearts torn out and trampled upon. We cannot, we must not, teach them, by word or example, that the way to peace and safety is through an escalation of violence or even threat of violence. We who lived through the Cold War should be the strongest proponents of peace through giving and loving rather than through grasping and ever-increasing levels of threat of violence and retaliation. 12-22-12 Seconds ticked. Time elongated, prolonged, stretched until the pause between each jump of the red second hand seemed an infinity. It paused at 25, then, eventually, ticked to 26, 27, 28. They watched, all of them. Tension filled the room, a tension nearly audible in its intensity. 33, 34, 35. The hour and minute hands so closely aligned at the vertical that human eye could not distinguish one from the other. 46…47…48… He stood closest to the clock, watching it with the concentration of one who has everything to gain and everything to lose. Convergence. Convergence of the hands of the clock, convergence of the seconds, minutes, hours and days of his life. All concentrated at this moment of time, this sliver of his life, this watershed. Nothing could stop the flow of events, now. Success or failure, indeed, life or death hinged on the few seconds remaining. 4…3….1… As if conducted by an unseen hand, all eyes turned to the window overlooking the city. A small rustle of adjusting position fluttered through the assembly, then, in the final half tick before the convergence of all three hands, silence. An almost-palpable shock ran through the assembly, at the infinitesimal jumped to one second past noon. Disappointment surged. Then, a puff of smoke, far across the cityscape, then a sudden burst toward the sky, resolving into a column a hundred feet high. Silent, at this distance and time, yet a cry of triumph shook the room, followed, a second later, by the dull reverberation that rattled the windows and sent confirming shock waves through the group. Their shout died. A solemn awareness settled. It had begun. He was dead. His death signaled a new life, a new pulse through the arteries of their country. His death cleared the way, opened the path for new leadership, changes, liberation. Liberty, at last. Freedom, at last. Time flowed, gaining, now, the speed of a swift stream. Quiet knots of discussion filled the room. Handshakes, backslaps, tears. Their time, now, they, the people, finally, in control. And he, in the center, their new leader. All eyes turned to him, expectant, waiting. Waiting for the first solemn victorious words from this planner, this architect this new messiah of their freedom. Later, much later, after the hubbub, the delirious celebration, the words of victory, the words of war, he was alone. Jubilation and fear, now, filled him. And a nagging worry. A worry kept in the background, suppressed in the excitement, the released tension of the day. Where was she? She hadn't been in the waiting group or the celebrative throng. He knocked on her door, once more, thinking she might have slipped in quietly, hiding her entrance from him at this late hour. Where could she be? This one gem of his personal life, this one survivor of his dead wife, this one seed of his own future. The streets grew silent, even the crowds of drunken revelers clearing the streets at last, tired of their own joyous rejoicing. Dew dripped from condensing surfaces, the occasional bark of a dog's disturbed dream, the passing of a distant car on some night errand the only sounds to break the night still. Outside the dark sky, speckled with the spangles of bright stars began to pale in the predawn preparation for a new day. A car's headlights turned into the street, its red taillight visible for a brief second as its perspective changed. He watched it slow then stop in front of his door. Police. How could they know? Was he still alive, in spite of the radio announcements? Could someone else have filled the power-vacuum so soon? Could they have traced him so swiftly? But, wouldn't they have sent many? Would they entrust such an important errand as his arrest to a single officer? He watched the polished boots, the hated symbol of the oppressor emerge first, followed by the head, above the door frame, uncovered by the second symbol. Then a tall thin body emerged, glancing at the door, confirming an address. He reached into the interior, retrieved the hat, put it on his head, adjusting it to just that angle that conveyed power and authority. Closing the door with quiet force, he turned to the house and rang the bell. Hurrying down the stairs, dread and fear filling him, he opened the door to face the officer. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment. He could not see threat there, could not see reason for flight or fight. A certain sadness, perhaps, but not reason for alarm. "You heard, sir, of the bomb, today, no doubt?" his words seemed an anachronism, an irony. "Yes." Cautious. "Well, sir," his voice faltered, seemed to break. He shuffled his feet, sliding his eyes from direct contact. "Well, sir," he repeated, clearing his throat. "I'm afraid." He did not finish his sentence, but thrust a purse into the gulf between them. It was battered, torn, scorched. “I'm afraid, sir, that someone from this house…." He did not hear the rest, did not want to hear the rest, could not hear the rest. His mind reeled in an agony of denial, of anger, of bitter recriminations. He opened the purse and dumped its contents to the concrete. But there, in the midst of the trappings of a young woman's life, the bracelet he had given her, the bracelet she wore as a symbol of her loyalty to him, her tie to him, her love for him. 1997

New town Connecticut

I have frequent encounters. These are not ordinary encounters with family or friends, nor are they encounters created by sci-fi movie producers with strange or cute aliens. But they are very real, nonetheless. My encounters are with trees, telephone poles, parking meters, half-open doors, wall corners, and other hard objects. And these meetings are, inevitably, painful to me. One of my least favorite close encounters is with an open dishwasher door. At shin height, it is a painful reminder to stay on task. Another frequent encounter is a telephone pole planted nearly in the center of a curving sidewalk. It is my nemesis. The curve is slight and deceptive, making me feel secure in my distances and trajectories. But, somehow, this telephone pole has a way of sliding slyly into the small space not covered by my cane’s arc. I really don’t know how it does it. But barked knuckles, and several bruised shoulders, are testimony to its skill and my lack of the same. This isn’t about clever, inanimate objects (though, sometimes, their cleverness does test my belief in animism a bit). It is about the results of these encounters. For example, over my right eye, neatly and precisely spaced as if a surgeon placed them, are a series of four scars from a certain bookcase corner. My shins have a nice set of scars and healing scabs from my forgetfulness around dishwashing time. At any time, I have one or more sore spots from a close encounter with some solid object. I’ve never been seriously wounded, just small cuts, abrasions, or bruises; things that sting when in the shower or make me wince when I bump the same place a second time. This makes me think of Columbine. I lived, until first grade, in Denver, and now live no more than two hours from Springfield. These two names, with a handful of others, have taken their places in our consciousness as places of unbelievable terror and horror, of heart-wrenching sadness and tragedy. Listening to the experts telling us what is wrong with our society, how we can identify potential perpetrators of such angry acts, whose fault and where the blame should be placed, activates my cynical side. I fear there is little or no chance of stopping this, no way to identify, to treat, to resolve the issues of these young people. There is something beyond society’s corporate coping working here. I think of the murdered ones and of the ones who wielded the weapons of hate and vengeance. And my heart weeps for both. How intense must the anger and hatred boiling within be to make killing seem an appropriate response to humiliation, neglect, or bullying? But, a part of me understands. No one feels good when belittled or humiliated because of membership status. Some are so fragile they feel the smallest pinprick of slight. Knowing this, hurting them, do I not share, to some small degree, in their pain and ultimate action? Their bruises may be as invisible as the scars and scabs of my pants-covered shins, but just as real. Their emotional bruises are painful to the slightest touch. Repeated wounds bleed with little provocation and fester deeply without a healing touch. Those who do these horrendous things are responsible for their own actions. But, do I not contribute to their anger and hatred when I hurt them. Since I can’t tell who the wounded are, I want to live life so as not to break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering flax -- to live in a way that will heal not hurt, soothe, not scar, bring peace, not pressure. It may be an impossible task, but it does start with me. Perhaps if each of us lived this way, we could prevent one school ground massacre. We could keep another town from being shredded and turned into a media circus, reclaim one more damaged life, remove one more child from the death list. And, perhaps, one road to this utopia is a generous heart. In this “I” generation, descended from the “me” generation, where success is measured in getting, where paranoia and anxiety are whipped to fever pitch by television; where all things are measured in terms of their impact on my well being, my benefit, my pleasure—perhaps giving is one facet of the gem of love that would begin the healing of our society. IN gifting, both giftee and gifter are blessed. One heart is warmed knowing the joy of giving; the other by the thought of another’s care and love. How can hatred anger and murder dwell in a land full of loving giving and with a void of greed? Perhaps, together, we could silence the evening news due to lack of content. ******** Note-This is a revision of an essay originally written in 1999, shortly after the Columbine massacre. It seems especially Germaine following last week’s horrific events both here in Oregon and in Connecticut. It is taken from a forthcoming book of essays reflections on vision and blindness written between 1995 and 2000. These essays were my therapy following loss of vision in 1995.