So proud of my country today. We are one step closer to becoming that nation we always believe ourselves to be. It's a good feeling.
And it's a strange feeling. I'm suddenly all-too aware today of how rare a moment like this is. The good guys won. People's inherent humanity has been recognized, and enshrined into our law. The evil has been banished from the land. It feels like it should ALWAYS be like this. But it almost never is.
Sorry to be so melancholy about it. I'm really ecstatic, truly. Just wish we could feel this more often.
We are a better nation now - a better people - than we were yesterday.
Here is hoping, sincerely, profoundly, that the trend continues.
#LoveWins
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Friday, June 26, 2015
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Final Summation...
Goddammit I hate memory sometimes.
And everything it leads to. Nostalgia. Reminiscence. A concrete sense of Self. Rambling, confessional blog posts about supposed childhood sexual traumas. And so forth.
After all that, after my whole humiliating confessional frenzy here in my last few posts (holy crap, was that all the way back in February??), I have to admit now that I'm not entirely sure my memory of these early experiences is even correct. And I've wanted to write and post this explanation for a good while now, because those posts are still sitting there on the front page, like a severed head at a dinner party; but I've been alternately too busy, or, mostly, too embarrassed by the whole ordeal to want to return to it. But I can't just leave that shit up there for anyone to read without any context or resolution. I have to put this to bed.
So here's how it all started. I was driving to work that February morning, and there was a discussion on the radio of how children respond to parental abuse. I don't remember what it was exactly, but something they said reminded me of this childhood friend (I'm going to start calling him "Bill" just so that I have a name to refer to him by). I hadn't thought about Bill in many, many years. I remembered some of our experiences together, and I remembered his big, angry father. And that's when I suddenly made the connection and realized, "Oh! Bill was abused by his father!" And everything else just followed from that.
I still believe that to be true; I believe Bill was abused (at least mentally and emotionally, if not physically or sexually) by his father. But the rest of it, I must admit now, I am significantly less sure about. I know that Bill and I "played doctor," but I don't remember all that we did. I don't actually remember how far our sexual play went. And, I am forced to admit to myself and all of you now, I don't actually remember who suggested what. I thought I did at the time, but I've since realized that's not true. It was just too long ago now for me to remember it clearly. It was so long ago that even the things I do remember clearly are suspect. And through my research I discovered that I would be forced to admit something else, something much worse: it is entirely possible that I am the one who abused him.
Reading through literature on the subject, I was surprised to find out that one of the more common, and yet least often discussed, forms of childhood sexual abuse is to simply educate a child about sex too much at too early an age. (It had never even occurred to me before my research that this could possibly be considered a form of abuse.) Sex is one of the most complicated and complex of all human interactions, and a 4 or 5 year-old child is simply too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it (hell, a lot of adults are too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it, for that matter); and so therefore giving a child that age too much information on the subject can often lead them to act out behaviors that they are not able to fully understand, process, or deal with in a meaningful way. That's the basic idea.
My mother's policy was that if I was old enough to ask the question, then I was old enough to hear the answer. And she was always very quick to let me know that if I ever had any questions at all, she would do her best to try to answer them truthfully and completely. And she lived by that statement. And I was a very curious boy. I had a lot of questions. And she answered every one she could. So I remember that throughout my childhood, basically until high school, I always knew more about sex (among many other things) than any of my friends or classmates seemed to. I was proud of that, actually. It made me feel grown-up. It made me feel strong. And superior. (Realizing now, as I type this, that this may have something to do with why I value intelligence so highly, in both myself and others.)
But in terms of my memories of my experiences with Bill, that throws everything into a new light. I only actually remember one thing we did that was definitely Bill's idea, and while that was a little dirty, it also wasn't exactly sexual, either (we were naked, but there was no touching); it would fall squarely in the category of "normative childhood sexual play." I don't actually remember what else we may have done, or who might've suggested any of it. But I know that in my memories of all the other boys (and some girls) who came after Bill, I was definitely the aggressor.
The hard part to admit, is that when I suddenly realized that morning that Bill had been abused by his father, I didn't then "realize" that he had actually been acting out his abuse on me, as I originally wrote. No, the truth was that I actually just assumed that was the case, and didn't recognize that I was making an assumption. "OMG, Bill was abused by his father! What do abused children do? They act out that same abuse on others. He must've been doing that to me when we played doctor! So that's why I then went on to do it others; I was acting out his abuse on me! That's where it all started! It makes perfect sense." And it does make perfect sense. But that doesn't automatically make it true, either.
I still don't know what happened back then, and I probably never will. But I have to admit that the much more likely scenario seems to be that I was actually a victim of childhood sexual abuse, but the abuser was my mother, not Bill. And it seems much more likely that I was acting out my abuse on him (and all the other boys and girls that came after him) rather than the other way around.
Bill moved away before we even hit puberty. I haven't seen or heard from him since I was a child. I have no idea what his life has been like.
If you're still out there, "Bill," I hope you're okay. And if you're not... all I can say is, I'm so, so sorry.
It wasn't my fault. I was only a child.
And everything it leads to. Nostalgia. Reminiscence. A concrete sense of Self. Rambling, confessional blog posts about supposed childhood sexual traumas. And so forth.
After all that, after my whole humiliating confessional frenzy here in my last few posts (holy crap, was that all the way back in February??), I have to admit now that I'm not entirely sure my memory of these early experiences is even correct. And I've wanted to write and post this explanation for a good while now, because those posts are still sitting there on the front page, like a severed head at a dinner party; but I've been alternately too busy, or, mostly, too embarrassed by the whole ordeal to want to return to it. But I can't just leave that shit up there for anyone to read without any context or resolution. I have to put this to bed.
So here's how it all started. I was driving to work that February morning, and there was a discussion on the radio of how children respond to parental abuse. I don't remember what it was exactly, but something they said reminded me of this childhood friend (I'm going to start calling him "Bill" just so that I have a name to refer to him by). I hadn't thought about Bill in many, many years. I remembered some of our experiences together, and I remembered his big, angry father. And that's when I suddenly made the connection and realized, "Oh! Bill was abused by his father!" And everything else just followed from that.
I still believe that to be true; I believe Bill was abused (at least mentally and emotionally, if not physically or sexually) by his father. But the rest of it, I must admit now, I am significantly less sure about. I know that Bill and I "played doctor," but I don't remember all that we did. I don't actually remember how far our sexual play went. And, I am forced to admit to myself and all of you now, I don't actually remember who suggested what. I thought I did at the time, but I've since realized that's not true. It was just too long ago now for me to remember it clearly. It was so long ago that even the things I do remember clearly are suspect. And through my research I discovered that I would be forced to admit something else, something much worse: it is entirely possible that I am the one who abused him.
Reading through literature on the subject, I was surprised to find out that one of the more common, and yet least often discussed, forms of childhood sexual abuse is to simply educate a child about sex too much at too early an age. (It had never even occurred to me before my research that this could possibly be considered a form of abuse.) Sex is one of the most complicated and complex of all human interactions, and a 4 or 5 year-old child is simply too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it (hell, a lot of adults are too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it, for that matter); and so therefore giving a child that age too much information on the subject can often lead them to act out behaviors that they are not able to fully understand, process, or deal with in a meaningful way. That's the basic idea.
My mother's policy was that if I was old enough to ask the question, then I was old enough to hear the answer. And she was always very quick to let me know that if I ever had any questions at all, she would do her best to try to answer them truthfully and completely. And she lived by that statement. And I was a very curious boy. I had a lot of questions. And she answered every one she could. So I remember that throughout my childhood, basically until high school, I always knew more about sex (among many other things) than any of my friends or classmates seemed to. I was proud of that, actually. It made me feel grown-up. It made me feel strong. And superior. (Realizing now, as I type this, that this may have something to do with why I value intelligence so highly, in both myself and others.)
But in terms of my memories of my experiences with Bill, that throws everything into a new light. I only actually remember one thing we did that was definitely Bill's idea, and while that was a little dirty, it also wasn't exactly sexual, either (we were naked, but there was no touching); it would fall squarely in the category of "normative childhood sexual play." I don't actually remember what else we may have done, or who might've suggested any of it. But I know that in my memories of all the other boys (and some girls) who came after Bill, I was definitely the aggressor.
The hard part to admit, is that when I suddenly realized that morning that Bill had been abused by his father, I didn't then "realize" that he had actually been acting out his abuse on me, as I originally wrote. No, the truth was that I actually just assumed that was the case, and didn't recognize that I was making an assumption. "OMG, Bill was abused by his father! What do abused children do? They act out that same abuse on others. He must've been doing that to me when we played doctor! So that's why I then went on to do it others; I was acting out his abuse on me! That's where it all started! It makes perfect sense." And it does make perfect sense. But that doesn't automatically make it true, either.
I still don't know what happened back then, and I probably never will. But I have to admit that the much more likely scenario seems to be that I was actually a victim of childhood sexual abuse, but the abuser was my mother, not Bill. And it seems much more likely that I was acting out my abuse on him (and all the other boys and girls that came after him) rather than the other way around.
Bill moved away before we even hit puberty. I haven't seen or heard from him since I was a child. I have no idea what his life has been like.
If you're still out there, "Bill," I hope you're okay. And if you're not... all I can say is, I'm so, so sorry.
It wasn't my fault. I was only a child.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Apparent Exaggerations...
Still need more time to write out the full story/explanation, but I did learn something that requires an immediate update.
I knew that the language I used yesterday didn't feel quite right. It seemed inflammatory, and loaded with a ton of connotations that were not actually part of the experience I was trying to communicate. But what other language was I supposed to use? How else was I supposed to describe it?
Well, finally getting around last night to doing some very preliminary research into the topic of child-on-child sexual abuse, revealed the rather obvious fact that I'm not the only person in the world who has ever had experiences like these, and that as such, there is already a whole lexicon available to me to describe it, if I had only bothered to look.
I learned right off the bat that I was not, in fact, molested. I was not abused. What happened to me would be characterized as "Normative Childhood Sexual Play," even if it was a little more advanced than most. The difference being, I was never coerced, or threatened, or manipulated, or made to do anything I didn't want to do. All this friend of mine did was suggest the ideas; I went along with them willingly, even excitedly. And I enjoyed them completely, to the point that I then went on to suggest them to all my other friends for the next 20 years.
What I went through was a normal part of growing up that pretty much everyone goes through at some point. The big difference for me, was that it happened to me about 10 years earlier than the average. I was regularly having sex in elementary school, and I was having the kind of sex that most other people don't even know about, much less start trying to engage in, until middle school or high school. (Oddly, I steadfastly maintained my virginity, however technical, until I was much older; I think having so much sex as a child made my virginity seem more precious to me somehow, and I was determined to save it until I found someone I really loved.)
I still think my friend was abused, though. It's the only explanation I have right now for how he could be so sexually aggressive, and adventurous, and knowledgeable, at such a young age. And so it's still possible that, from his point of view, he was acting out from his history of abuse. But whether he was attempting to abuse me or not (who knows how he would've responded if I'd said no), I wasn't abused. I went willingly, and loved every minute of it.
And while I feel a lot better now, knowing that I don't actually have to wear the "childhood sexual abuse victim" label for the rest of my life, there's still a lot left here that I need to unpack. I'm still not sure what all this means, or what I'm supposed to do with this new information.
I knew that the language I used yesterday didn't feel quite right. It seemed inflammatory, and loaded with a ton of connotations that were not actually part of the experience I was trying to communicate. But what other language was I supposed to use? How else was I supposed to describe it?
Well, finally getting around last night to doing some very preliminary research into the topic of child-on-child sexual abuse, revealed the rather obvious fact that I'm not the only person in the world who has ever had experiences like these, and that as such, there is already a whole lexicon available to me to describe it, if I had only bothered to look.
I learned right off the bat that I was not, in fact, molested. I was not abused. What happened to me would be characterized as "Normative Childhood Sexual Play," even if it was a little more advanced than most. The difference being, I was never coerced, or threatened, or manipulated, or made to do anything I didn't want to do. All this friend of mine did was suggest the ideas; I went along with them willingly, even excitedly. And I enjoyed them completely, to the point that I then went on to suggest them to all my other friends for the next 20 years.
What I went through was a normal part of growing up that pretty much everyone goes through at some point. The big difference for me, was that it happened to me about 10 years earlier than the average. I was regularly having sex in elementary school, and I was having the kind of sex that most other people don't even know about, much less start trying to engage in, until middle school or high school. (Oddly, I steadfastly maintained my virginity, however technical, until I was much older; I think having so much sex as a child made my virginity seem more precious to me somehow, and I was determined to save it until I found someone I really loved.)
I still think my friend was abused, though. It's the only explanation I have right now for how he could be so sexually aggressive, and adventurous, and knowledgeable, at such a young age. And so it's still possible that, from his point of view, he was acting out from his history of abuse. But whether he was attempting to abuse me or not (who knows how he would've responded if I'd said no), I wasn't abused. I went willingly, and loved every minute of it.
And while I feel a lot better now, knowing that I don't actually have to wear the "childhood sexual abuse victim" label for the rest of my life, there's still a lot left here that I need to unpack. I'm still not sure what all this means, or what I'm supposed to do with this new information.
Monday, February 9, 2015
We Are What We Remember We Are...
I realized this morning, that I was - rather technically, I must caveat - molested by one of my very first childhood friends. And that this series of events was directly responsible for shaping a very large portion of my personality; of who I still am today.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. There's way too much story there to be able to tell it all right now. But I had to at least get this much, the realization of it, the acknowledgment of it, out of me and into existence, before I forgot it again, or subsumed it in some other way.
I feel like I'm supposed to be upset about this. But I don't think I feel particularly upset about it, at least not yet. (There is a small part of me, however, that is upset at myself for not being upset about it, for whatever that's worth.) I'd always remembered - and still remember - our "playing doctor" as being entirely consensual. (As much as it could be, at least. We were about the same age at the time, so technically, legally, neither of us could consent; but we were also the only ones involved. So how does that work?) So, I've never felt - and still don't feel - victimized in any way. I feel no enmity or ill-will towards this individual, and never have. And the parts of my Self that I can now suddenly attribute to my early friendship with this person (at least, the ones I know about) are not things that I've ever felt particularly bad about or wished to be different. Nor have I ever felt a need to investigate their root, or determine their origin.
Which I guess is part of why it feels so strange to suddenly know where they all come from. I received an answer to an absolutely massive question, before I had ever even asked it in the first place. There's an almost vertigo to it; the sensation of it makes you dizzy. A memory you've had for almost 40 years, and suddenly, from out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, one tiny little detail you'd left behind somewhere along the way comes back into focus; and it fits like a keystone into place with all the other memories it connects to: that time, that place, those people; filling in a hole you never knew was there; and now you see it all so clearly, understanding it all for the very first time, after 40 years; and that realization leads to another, which leads to another, cascading down through your history like a line of dominoes, until suddenly four decades of Self have been re-written. You understand yourself now in a new, better, more complete way, a more whole way, than you ever have before. But you also know now, that you're not who you thought you were; and you never have been. So, then, who are you?
That's kind of a lot to handle when it all hits you in a matter of seconds while you're driving down the highway late to work on a Monday morning.
So, yeah. This one's gonna take a while to unpack, I guess.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. There's way too much story there to be able to tell it all right now. But I had to at least get this much, the realization of it, the acknowledgment of it, out of me and into existence, before I forgot it again, or subsumed it in some other way.
I feel like I'm supposed to be upset about this. But I don't think I feel particularly upset about it, at least not yet. (There is a small part of me, however, that is upset at myself for not being upset about it, for whatever that's worth.) I'd always remembered - and still remember - our "playing doctor" as being entirely consensual. (As much as it could be, at least. We were about the same age at the time, so technically, legally, neither of us could consent; but we were also the only ones involved. So how does that work?) So, I've never felt - and still don't feel - victimized in any way. I feel no enmity or ill-will towards this individual, and never have. And the parts of my Self that I can now suddenly attribute to my early friendship with this person (at least, the ones I know about) are not things that I've ever felt particularly bad about or wished to be different. Nor have I ever felt a need to investigate their root, or determine their origin.
Which I guess is part of why it feels so strange to suddenly know where they all come from. I received an answer to an absolutely massive question, before I had ever even asked it in the first place. There's an almost vertigo to it; the sensation of it makes you dizzy. A memory you've had for almost 40 years, and suddenly, from out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, one tiny little detail you'd left behind somewhere along the way comes back into focus; and it fits like a keystone into place with all the other memories it connects to: that time, that place, those people; filling in a hole you never knew was there; and now you see it all so clearly, understanding it all for the very first time, after 40 years; and that realization leads to another, which leads to another, cascading down through your history like a line of dominoes, until suddenly four decades of Self have been re-written. You understand yourself now in a new, better, more complete way, a more whole way, than you ever have before. But you also know now, that you're not who you thought you were; and you never have been. So, then, who are you?
That's kind of a lot to handle when it all hits you in a matter of seconds while you're driving down the highway late to work on a Monday morning.
So, yeah. This one's gonna take a while to unpack, I guess.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Eleven Years...
Eleven years ago today, we were packing to leave the beach.
Princess and I, and two of our friends, had just spent a lovely post-Labor Day week at my grandfather's beach cottage in Delaware, and our vacation was over, and we spent the morning packing up to return to our "normal" lives. (I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would ever set foot in that cottage on the beach, where I had spent part of every summer of my entire life up to that point.) When we were finally ready to leave, and packing up the car, I turned my cell phone back on for the first time since I'd arrived a week earlier. About a minute later, I found I had a dozen voicemails from my father, all from that morning. I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and heard recording after recording of my father telling me that the United States was under attack, to turn on the TV, and whatever I do, not to come home.
We hadn't turned on the TV once the entire week. When we finally turned it on that morning, we were all horrified, and dumbstruck. And as we stood there, watching the towers burning, I remember thinking to myself, with odd clarity, That son-of-a-bitch is going to use this as an excuse to invade Iraq. My hand to gods, that exact thought crossed my mind, followed immediately by, No - no way - that's ridiculous - even he wouldn't do something that horrible.
We decided to stay another day, because no one was quite sure what was going on at that point, and it just felt a lot safer out there in that sleepy town on the seashore, then back home, next-door to D.C. That was one of the most surreal days of my life. We were glued to the TV all day, watching what looked like Hell Come To The U.S. But where we were, it was a beautiful, just absolutely gorgeous late-Summer day. It could not have been more peaceful, or serene. It produced a strange sort of cognitive dissonance that permeated the entire day for all of us. Nothing we did felt right - if it fit with the scene around us, it didn't fit with the way we felt about what we knew was going on at home; and if it fit with how we felt about the attacks, then it seemed really out-of-place with where we were at the time and what we were experiencing just then.
Not knowing what else to do, we partied that night like it was the end of the world. We did shots and got wasted and played Truth-or-Dare until we were all drunk and naked. (Trust me, it was a lot more fun at the time than it sounds now.)
And the next day, we went back home to a world that had completely changed, in ways we would have a hard time understanding or coming to terms with for many years. I still haven't completely come to terms with a lot of it.
Addendum: I didn't want to make my post today about this, because I didn't want to be perceived as disrespectful. But I feel like I have to say it, for several reasons. It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and I don't want to bottle it up and pretend it isn't there. And yes, some people might perceive it as disrespectful, but I don't agree with that opinion, and if I start basing my decisions about what to say or believe off of what other people might think about it, then I'm lost. In my opinion, today is the most appropriate time to address it; the only appropriate time to address it, really. It would seem oddly out of place on any other day, and waiting until next year will not have changed anything one way or the other, and by then I might have forgotten it, and lost the opportunity to express these feelings for good.
Let me preface this further by saying, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do believe that conspiracies can and do occur, but I am also a skeptic by nature, and 99% of the conspiracy theories I hear are clearly, demonstrably, ridiculous. However, that said, there is something about the official story of what happened that day that has just never sat right with me. I know a lot of people are going to consider me an ignorant, monstrous anti-patriot for saying this, but that doesn't change the way it appears to me.
I have never believed the story of United 93.
I am truly, truly sorry if that bothers you in any way. I don't want to upset anyone, and that certainly has nothing to do with why I'm writing this here. But it also doesn't do anything to change my perception of the situation, either.
It just always struck me as too neat, too tidy, too... American. It's like something out of a storybook, or a fairytale. Or a Hollywood movie. It's just too perfect to be real. The fact that they just happened to be lucky enough to crash in an uninhabited area. The fact that the one plane that didn't hit its target just happened to be the last one, and just happened to be the one headed for the White House. The fact that on that day, of all days, for this story that is fairly dripping with patriotism and Americans-Are-The-Greatest glory to come out, from the government, has just been a little hard for me to swallow. From the first time I heard it, it has felt exactly like the "your dog went to live on a farm upstate" story a father would tell to his child.
I tend to follow the "Occam's Razor" style-guide when it comes to conspiracy theories: the simplest explanation is the most likely. That's one of the many reasons why I've never believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" (even though it would've felt so good to blame Cheney and Rumsfeld for it); the idea that the federal government could organize a conspiracy on that massive a scale is simply ludicrous, and laughably so.
But the idea that they might shoot down a passenger plane that they believed was on a suicide mission to crash into the White House, especially after three other planes had already hit their targets, and without knowing how many more there might be? And that if they did, in fact, shoot down that plane, that they might, on such a tragic day, tell us an up-lifting story of everyday American heroism, rather than the truth - that the United States government had been forced to kill some of its own citizens, in order to prevent the murder of far more? Those really just don't seem that far-fetched to me. In fact, they seem kind of plausible.
And the more I've been thinking about it lately, the more I've come to realize, that if that is what happened, I wouldn't even blame them for it.
Even if the U.S. shot down United 93, they wouldn't be responsible for those people's deaths. The terrorists who hijacked that plane, and pointed it at the White House are the ones responsible. There is simply no argument about that. I mean, honestly, what else should the government have done? Let the plane destroy the White House, just so that those Americans on that plane could live another hour? Is there anyone who could truly argue that there was some safe way to quickly bring that plane down without injuring anyone? If the government had the means and opportunity to take down that plane - and I don't think there is any reasonable argument to be made that they didn't - then, if I'm honest with myself, I don't see what other choice they had.
And you know what? I wouldn't even blame them for lying to us about it. Those men and women on that plane are everyday American heroes, no matter how they died. Just like every single person who died in New York or D.C. that day is a hero. Don't they deserve to be remembered as heroes? Don't they deserve better than to be remembered as innocent victims caught in the crossfire between their government and a handful of sick assholes?
Yes, you could make the argument that the lie was self-serving to the ones who told it. And I don't necessarily think you'd be wrong. But I think it's just as true that the lie honors the memories of those men and women in a just way; in a way fitting of Americans who gave their lives, willingly or not, so that others could live.
The official story of United 93 might be a mythology, but they deserve that, and much more. A beautiful mythology to honor their deaths is, literally, the least we can do.
Princess and I, and two of our friends, had just spent a lovely post-Labor Day week at my grandfather's beach cottage in Delaware, and our vacation was over, and we spent the morning packing up to return to our "normal" lives. (I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would ever set foot in that cottage on the beach, where I had spent part of every summer of my entire life up to that point.) When we were finally ready to leave, and packing up the car, I turned my cell phone back on for the first time since I'd arrived a week earlier. About a minute later, I found I had a dozen voicemails from my father, all from that morning. I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and heard recording after recording of my father telling me that the United States was under attack, to turn on the TV, and whatever I do, not to come home.
We hadn't turned on the TV once the entire week. When we finally turned it on that morning, we were all horrified, and dumbstruck. And as we stood there, watching the towers burning, I remember thinking to myself, with odd clarity, That son-of-a-bitch is going to use this as an excuse to invade Iraq. My hand to gods, that exact thought crossed my mind, followed immediately by, No - no way - that's ridiculous - even he wouldn't do something that horrible.
We decided to stay another day, because no one was quite sure what was going on at that point, and it just felt a lot safer out there in that sleepy town on the seashore, then back home, next-door to D.C. That was one of the most surreal days of my life. We were glued to the TV all day, watching what looked like Hell Come To The U.S. But where we were, it was a beautiful, just absolutely gorgeous late-Summer day. It could not have been more peaceful, or serene. It produced a strange sort of cognitive dissonance that permeated the entire day for all of us. Nothing we did felt right - if it fit with the scene around us, it didn't fit with the way we felt about what we knew was going on at home; and if it fit with how we felt about the attacks, then it seemed really out-of-place with where we were at the time and what we were experiencing just then.
Not knowing what else to do, we partied that night like it was the end of the world. We did shots and got wasted and played Truth-or-Dare until we were all drunk and naked. (Trust me, it was a lot more fun at the time than it sounds now.)
And the next day, we went back home to a world that had completely changed, in ways we would have a hard time understanding or coming to terms with for many years. I still haven't completely come to terms with a lot of it.
Addendum: I didn't want to make my post today about this, because I didn't want to be perceived as disrespectful. But I feel like I have to say it, for several reasons. It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and I don't want to bottle it up and pretend it isn't there. And yes, some people might perceive it as disrespectful, but I don't agree with that opinion, and if I start basing my decisions about what to say or believe off of what other people might think about it, then I'm lost. In my opinion, today is the most appropriate time to address it; the only appropriate time to address it, really. It would seem oddly out of place on any other day, and waiting until next year will not have changed anything one way or the other, and by then I might have forgotten it, and lost the opportunity to express these feelings for good.
Let me preface this further by saying, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do believe that conspiracies can and do occur, but I am also a skeptic by nature, and 99% of the conspiracy theories I hear are clearly, demonstrably, ridiculous. However, that said, there is something about the official story of what happened that day that has just never sat right with me. I know a lot of people are going to consider me an ignorant, monstrous anti-patriot for saying this, but that doesn't change the way it appears to me.
I have never believed the story of United 93.
I am truly, truly sorry if that bothers you in any way. I don't want to upset anyone, and that certainly has nothing to do with why I'm writing this here. But it also doesn't do anything to change my perception of the situation, either.
It just always struck me as too neat, too tidy, too... American. It's like something out of a storybook, or a fairytale. Or a Hollywood movie. It's just too perfect to be real. The fact that they just happened to be lucky enough to crash in an uninhabited area. The fact that the one plane that didn't hit its target just happened to be the last one, and just happened to be the one headed for the White House. The fact that on that day, of all days, for this story that is fairly dripping with patriotism and Americans-Are-The-Greatest glory to come out, from the government, has just been a little hard for me to swallow. From the first time I heard it, it has felt exactly like the "your dog went to live on a farm upstate" story a father would tell to his child.
I tend to follow the "Occam's Razor" style-guide when it comes to conspiracy theories: the simplest explanation is the most likely. That's one of the many reasons why I've never believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" (even though it would've felt so good to blame Cheney and Rumsfeld for it); the idea that the federal government could organize a conspiracy on that massive a scale is simply ludicrous, and laughably so.
But the idea that they might shoot down a passenger plane that they believed was on a suicide mission to crash into the White House, especially after three other planes had already hit their targets, and without knowing how many more there might be? And that if they did, in fact, shoot down that plane, that they might, on such a tragic day, tell us an up-lifting story of everyday American heroism, rather than the truth - that the United States government had been forced to kill some of its own citizens, in order to prevent the murder of far more? Those really just don't seem that far-fetched to me. In fact, they seem kind of plausible.
And the more I've been thinking about it lately, the more I've come to realize, that if that is what happened, I wouldn't even blame them for it.
Even if the U.S. shot down United 93, they wouldn't be responsible for those people's deaths. The terrorists who hijacked that plane, and pointed it at the White House are the ones responsible. There is simply no argument about that. I mean, honestly, what else should the government have done? Let the plane destroy the White House, just so that those Americans on that plane could live another hour? Is there anyone who could truly argue that there was some safe way to quickly bring that plane down without injuring anyone? If the government had the means and opportunity to take down that plane - and I don't think there is any reasonable argument to be made that they didn't - then, if I'm honest with myself, I don't see what other choice they had.
And you know what? I wouldn't even blame them for lying to us about it. Those men and women on that plane are everyday American heroes, no matter how they died. Just like every single person who died in New York or D.C. that day is a hero. Don't they deserve to be remembered as heroes? Don't they deserve better than to be remembered as innocent victims caught in the crossfire between their government and a handful of sick assholes?
Yes, you could make the argument that the lie was self-serving to the ones who told it. And I don't necessarily think you'd be wrong. But I think it's just as true that the lie honors the memories of those men and women in a just way; in a way fitting of Americans who gave their lives, willingly or not, so that others could live.
The official story of United 93 might be a mythology, but they deserve that, and much more. A beautiful mythology to honor their deaths is, literally, the least we can do.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
The Eternal World Record...
What does a World Record mean, if no one is allowed to challenge it?
1984 and the World Record that May Never Be Broken
1984 and the World Record that May Never Be Broken
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
In Toto Memorium...
There's a War Memorial in the middle of my town.
It's a park, actually. It's filled with dozens of memorials, each one for a different conflict. Apparently, it's the only park in Maryland that commemorates soldiers from every American war; from the French and Indian War, all the way to the first Gulf War. There's even a monument dedicated to the residents of Frederick County that lost their lives fighting the Barbary Pirates.
Apparently, there are also some soldiers buried under that park. Which I guess is fitting, considering its purpose.
I first discovered the park a few years ago, on another Walpurgisnacht, while drifting through town in the middle of the night, in my usual state of psychedelic illumination. It was knowledge of the bodies buried there that actually drew me to investigate it; tickling my sense of ghoulish voyeurism. But I ended up having an entirely different experience.
I imagine most people have been to war memorials at one time or another. Living in the D.C. area, it's an especially common occurrence; I'd lost track of the number of memorials I'd been to before I'd even made it to high school. After a while, they just start to blend into one another, and it's easy to become desensitized to their meaning. But, usually, those are memorials dedicated to one, single, specific war or conflict. I found that the effect of a memorial dedicated to All American War to be powerful in the extreme, even to someone as jaded as I sometimes pretend to be.
The first effect I noticed is that there are simply so many monuments in this park. And when you realize that each one is dedicated to a different war, then you begin to get a sense of the scope of just how much of our history we have spent trying to kill other people before they could kill us. And you can't help but start to ask yourself, Have we ever been at peace? Is peace even a realistic possibility? Or is it just an idealistic fantasy we tell ourselves to soothe our sense of fear and alienation in the face of a violent, hostile, uncaring world; just like "God" and "Heaven"? (How ironic that those two concepts in particular, so often the direct cause of so many wars, are actually responsible for all wars, in a way. Would it be so easy for us to kill one another so often, and in such numbers, and for such ridiculous reasons, if so many of us didn't believe with such absolute certainty that they wouldn't really be ending forever, but simply traveling to "a better place?" I would wager that Life means more to the atheist, who understands its true finality.)
But then I began to wander through the monuments, one-by-one, down through the history of our wars. The Persian Gulf War. The Vietnam War. The Korean War. Each one filled with names chisled in stone. Names of people who lived here, in my town. Who wandered these same streets at some point in their youth. Some who even wandered the same school hallways. Maybe some who had even lived on my street. Fools and Heroes, every one. Strong, and Doomed, and so unbelievably Brave. Braver than I will ever be. Braver than I ever could be. And just boys! Just boys. They'd only just started. They had so much left to do. Just boys. How is it possible that this country, of all countries, that coddles and insulates and over-protects its children to such a ridiculous, obsessive degree, could do all of this? Could still be doing all of this? It is literally, staggering.
And so many names. So many names. The World War II memorial is the largest in the park, by far. A wall, ten feet high, and fifty feet long. Entirely filled with names. Our names. And I wandered down that memorial, reading those names, trying to take it all in. It was almost too much. I could barely comprehend so many people, just from my tiny little town alone(!), all fighting and dying all over the world, not much more than sixty years ago. How could that possibly have happened?! And this, the most moral and just of all the wars! The one where we were most clearly combating an Evil; the greatest Evil the modern world had ever seen. It was still almost too much to believe. But I finally got to the end of that immense list, and the end of that long wall... and then I realized - the list of names had stopped at "L." Oh, no, I thought, it's not possible. But I rounded the corner of that wall to discover, to my horror, that the entire other side was filled in, as well.
It felt like a lead weight had been inserted into my chest. It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking down into tears right then and there. I simply could not comprehend that amount of pain and suffering, on that enormous scale.
But the memorial that affected me most, and that I will always remember, was the memorial to the soldier boys of World War I.
I've always had a bit of a fascination with WWI. It was, by far, the most gruesome and horrible conflict that humanity has ever seen. The brutal combination of trench warfare and the advent of modern weaponry - the machine gun, the tank, the flamethrower, the grenade, the fighter plane, chemical warfare, etc., etc. - created an environment that was, quite simply, more akin to a meat grinder than what we think of as "war." Almost forty MILLION people killed, wounded, or missing-in-action. By the end of the war, Europe was running out of fighting age men. So they were drafting men as old as seventy, and boys as young as fourteen. More meat for the grinder.
At the time, they called it "The Great War."
The memorial dedicated to this human atrocity is obviously the oldest in the park. It's almost certainly the first one built there. It was sculpted in the style of classic monuments, with a bronze statue of a doughboy standing atop a large, octagonal concrete base. Onto each of the eight sides of the base has been affixed a bronze plaque, each about three feet wide by four feet tall; and each plaque is, again, a list of names. The names are so small that they are impossible to read without climbing up onto the memorial itself. They had to make them that small in order to fit them all on the monument. And unlike the other monuments in the park, which list the names of everyone involved in their conflict in any way, the WWI memorial is from an earlier time in America's history - it only lists the names of the boys who never came home. Boys from my hometown. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. All slaughtered. Gone now, even from memory. All that's left of them are names on a plaque, that you can't even read.
As I wandered around the memorial, trying to comprehend the weight of it all, I came upon one plaque that was different from the others. It had fewer names, and was in a larger font. I noticed it had a title across the top that was large enough that I could it read it:
"The Negro Men of Frederick County, Who Gave Their Lives In The Great War of 1917"
I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes, trying to come up with my response to that; to sum up how it made me feel then, or how I feel about it now. I'm sorry, but I can't. I just don't have the words. I guess I should try to concentrate on feeling grateful that they were even included in the memorial at all.
I'll leave you with this thought for this Memorial Day. Sums up my feelings pretty well.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. And while you're out there, barbequing, and sunbathing, and partying - try to be good to someone. Just because you can.
And just because, it's something.
It's a park, actually. It's filled with dozens of memorials, each one for a different conflict. Apparently, it's the only park in Maryland that commemorates soldiers from every American war; from the French and Indian War, all the way to the first Gulf War. There's even a monument dedicated to the residents of Frederick County that lost their lives fighting the Barbary Pirates.
Apparently, there are also some soldiers buried under that park. Which I guess is fitting, considering its purpose.
I first discovered the park a few years ago, on another Walpurgisnacht, while drifting through town in the middle of the night, in my usual state of psychedelic illumination. It was knowledge of the bodies buried there that actually drew me to investigate it; tickling my sense of ghoulish voyeurism. But I ended up having an entirely different experience.
I imagine most people have been to war memorials at one time or another. Living in the D.C. area, it's an especially common occurrence; I'd lost track of the number of memorials I'd been to before I'd even made it to high school. After a while, they just start to blend into one another, and it's easy to become desensitized to their meaning. But, usually, those are memorials dedicated to one, single, specific war or conflict. I found that the effect of a memorial dedicated to All American War to be powerful in the extreme, even to someone as jaded as I sometimes pretend to be.
The first effect I noticed is that there are simply so many monuments in this park. And when you realize that each one is dedicated to a different war, then you begin to get a sense of the scope of just how much of our history we have spent trying to kill other people before they could kill us. And you can't help but start to ask yourself, Have we ever been at peace? Is peace even a realistic possibility? Or is it just an idealistic fantasy we tell ourselves to soothe our sense of fear and alienation in the face of a violent, hostile, uncaring world; just like "God" and "Heaven"? (How ironic that those two concepts in particular, so often the direct cause of so many wars, are actually responsible for all wars, in a way. Would it be so easy for us to kill one another so often, and in such numbers, and for such ridiculous reasons, if so many of us didn't believe with such absolute certainty that they wouldn't really be ending forever, but simply traveling to "a better place?" I would wager that Life means more to the atheist, who understands its true finality.)
But then I began to wander through the monuments, one-by-one, down through the history of our wars. The Persian Gulf War. The Vietnam War. The Korean War. Each one filled with names chisled in stone. Names of people who lived here, in my town. Who wandered these same streets at some point in their youth. Some who even wandered the same school hallways. Maybe some who had even lived on my street. Fools and Heroes, every one. Strong, and Doomed, and so unbelievably Brave. Braver than I will ever be. Braver than I ever could be. And just boys! Just boys. They'd only just started. They had so much left to do. Just boys. How is it possible that this country, of all countries, that coddles and insulates and over-protects its children to such a ridiculous, obsessive degree, could do all of this? Could still be doing all of this? It is literally, staggering.
And so many names. So many names. The World War II memorial is the largest in the park, by far. A wall, ten feet high, and fifty feet long. Entirely filled with names. Our names. And I wandered down that memorial, reading those names, trying to take it all in. It was almost too much. I could barely comprehend so many people, just from my tiny little town alone(!), all fighting and dying all over the world, not much more than sixty years ago. How could that possibly have happened?! And this, the most moral and just of all the wars! The one where we were most clearly combating an Evil; the greatest Evil the modern world had ever seen. It was still almost too much to believe. But I finally got to the end of that immense list, and the end of that long wall... and then I realized - the list of names had stopped at "L." Oh, no, I thought, it's not possible. But I rounded the corner of that wall to discover, to my horror, that the entire other side was filled in, as well.
It felt like a lead weight had been inserted into my chest. It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking down into tears right then and there. I simply could not comprehend that amount of pain and suffering, on that enormous scale.
But the memorial that affected me most, and that I will always remember, was the memorial to the soldier boys of World War I.
I've always had a bit of a fascination with WWI. It was, by far, the most gruesome and horrible conflict that humanity has ever seen. The brutal combination of trench warfare and the advent of modern weaponry - the machine gun, the tank, the flamethrower, the grenade, the fighter plane, chemical warfare, etc., etc. - created an environment that was, quite simply, more akin to a meat grinder than what we think of as "war." Almost forty MILLION people killed, wounded, or missing-in-action. By the end of the war, Europe was running out of fighting age men. So they were drafting men as old as seventy, and boys as young as fourteen. More meat for the grinder.
At the time, they called it "The Great War."
The memorial dedicated to this human atrocity is obviously the oldest in the park. It's almost certainly the first one built there. It was sculpted in the style of classic monuments, with a bronze statue of a doughboy standing atop a large, octagonal concrete base. Onto each of the eight sides of the base has been affixed a bronze plaque, each about three feet wide by four feet tall; and each plaque is, again, a list of names. The names are so small that they are impossible to read without climbing up onto the memorial itself. They had to make them that small in order to fit them all on the monument. And unlike the other monuments in the park, which list the names of everyone involved in their conflict in any way, the WWI memorial is from an earlier time in America's history - it only lists the names of the boys who never came home. Boys from my hometown. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. All slaughtered. Gone now, even from memory. All that's left of them are names on a plaque, that you can't even read.
As I wandered around the memorial, trying to comprehend the weight of it all, I came upon one plaque that was different from the others. It had fewer names, and was in a larger font. I noticed it had a title across the top that was large enough that I could it read it:
"The Negro Men of Frederick County, Who Gave Their Lives In The Great War of 1917"
I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes, trying to come up with my response to that; to sum up how it made me feel then, or how I feel about it now. I'm sorry, but I can't. I just don't have the words. I guess I should try to concentrate on feeling grateful that they were even included in the memorial at all.
I'll leave you with this thought for this Memorial Day. Sums up my feelings pretty well.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. And while you're out there, barbequing, and sunbathing, and partying - try to be good to someone. Just because you can.
And just because, it's something.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Barbershop...
There's a barbershop on my street.
Not a hair salon, not a hair stylist, but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned barbershop. Opened in 1952. And it looks like it hasn't changed much since then, with the exception of several framed pictures of the Obamas added to the walls.
And the walls are packed. You know that old-timey kitsch that places like T.G.I.Friday's and Applebee's try to capture with all that faux-historic, pre-packaged, plastic junk they hang all over their walls? This place is what those poseurs are trying to replicate. Framed pictures of Martin and Malcolm (and now Barack and Michelle), Hall of Fame plaques from old football and baseball players, signed jersyes and ballcaps, framed newspaper clippings spanning the last 50 years, and all mixed in with portraits of his family, his sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and their spelling bee ribbons, and A+ report cards, and other tokens of their achievements. It's cliché, but true - it felt like stepping back in time.
The barber's name is Buddy. Which, again, seems so perfect that it's almost cliché. Of course his name is Buddy - how could it have been anything else? A slim, older black gentleman, with a thin mustache, he took over the shop from his uncle in 1960, when he was just 16 years-old, and he's been running it ever since. He lives upstairs, and there's a beauty parlor for the ladies in the back.
There's just the one barber chair. He's the barber, so why would he need more than that? Made of steel and cast iron, it looks like it dates to the '30s or '40s. It even has an extra footrest above the normal one, where you would rest your feet in order to get your shoes shined, while you got a cut or a shave. It's too bad that service was no longer offered. The pricelist on the wall said, "Haircut - $10, Shave - $4, Afro shaping/trim - $15."
I could tell it's been a while since Buddy cut a white boy's hair. His scissors were a bit rusty, and more than a little bit dull. After a while, he just gave up and went to work on me with the clippers. After all these years, he's a master with the clippers. He's got 4 different kinds, and dozens of guards, and he can do things with electric clippers that they were never intended for. When he's cutting your hair, he stands between the chair and the mirror, and he has you facing out into the room, with the mirror at your back; the exact opposite of every haircut I've ever had. As I sat in his chair, looking at the empty room, and the line of empty chairs in front of me, I couldn't help imagining what it must've been like 20, 30, 40 years ago. (Hell, with the way the neighborhood has changed recently, in part because of me I'm more than a little ashamed to say, we could probably even say just 5 or 10 years ago.) At some point it must've been a center of local men's culture. People hanging out, reading the paper, bullshitting about politics and local gossip, waiting for their turn in Buddy's chair. There's an obvious quiet sadness to Buddy's demeanor, and looking out at that empty line of chairs, it was easy to imagine why that might be.
When he was finished with my hair, he gave me a shave. Trimmed up my mustache and beard real nicely. It's the first time since I grew them that I don't look like a hippie! (Or, at least, someone trying to look like a hippie. Thirty-six years-old, and I still can't grow a full goatee, much less a beard.) When he was finished, he rubbed down my scalp with a lotion that smelled a little like roses, and dabbed my face with some sort of tonic that felt like an alcohol and smelled vaguely of eucalyptus. Then he handed me a hand-mirror to examine his work. (He never did turn me around to face the wall mirror behind the chair.)
He gave me a $10 haircut, straight out of the 1960s. And it looks like a $10 haircut. Too high in the back, way too high around the ears; a little too bushy here, a little too thin over there. And it is awesome. Exactly what I wanted. Simple, and classic. And more than a little nerdy.
I'm really looking forward to the next time I get to spend some time in Buddy's chair.
Not a hair salon, not a hair stylist, but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned barbershop. Opened in 1952. And it looks like it hasn't changed much since then, with the exception of several framed pictures of the Obamas added to the walls.
And the walls are packed. You know that old-timey kitsch that places like T.G.I.Friday's and Applebee's try to capture with all that faux-historic, pre-packaged, plastic junk they hang all over their walls? This place is what those poseurs are trying to replicate. Framed pictures of Martin and Malcolm (and now Barack and Michelle), Hall of Fame plaques from old football and baseball players, signed jersyes and ballcaps, framed newspaper clippings spanning the last 50 years, and all mixed in with portraits of his family, his sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and their spelling bee ribbons, and A+ report cards, and other tokens of their achievements. It's cliché, but true - it felt like stepping back in time.
The barber's name is Buddy. Which, again, seems so perfect that it's almost cliché. Of course his name is Buddy - how could it have been anything else? A slim, older black gentleman, with a thin mustache, he took over the shop from his uncle in 1960, when he was just 16 years-old, and he's been running it ever since. He lives upstairs, and there's a beauty parlor for the ladies in the back.
There's just the one barber chair. He's the barber, so why would he need more than that? Made of steel and cast iron, it looks like it dates to the '30s or '40s. It even has an extra footrest above the normal one, where you would rest your feet in order to get your shoes shined, while you got a cut or a shave. It's too bad that service was no longer offered. The pricelist on the wall said, "Haircut - $10, Shave - $4, Afro shaping/trim - $15."
I could tell it's been a while since Buddy cut a white boy's hair. His scissors were a bit rusty, and more than a little bit dull. After a while, he just gave up and went to work on me with the clippers. After all these years, he's a master with the clippers. He's got 4 different kinds, and dozens of guards, and he can do things with electric clippers that they were never intended for. When he's cutting your hair, he stands between the chair and the mirror, and he has you facing out into the room, with the mirror at your back; the exact opposite of every haircut I've ever had. As I sat in his chair, looking at the empty room, and the line of empty chairs in front of me, I couldn't help imagining what it must've been like 20, 30, 40 years ago. (Hell, with the way the neighborhood has changed recently, in part because of me I'm more than a little ashamed to say, we could probably even say just 5 or 10 years ago.) At some point it must've been a center of local men's culture. People hanging out, reading the paper, bullshitting about politics and local gossip, waiting for their turn in Buddy's chair. There's an obvious quiet sadness to Buddy's demeanor, and looking out at that empty line of chairs, it was easy to imagine why that might be.
When he was finished with my hair, he gave me a shave. Trimmed up my mustache and beard real nicely. It's the first time since I grew them that I don't look like a hippie! (Or, at least, someone trying to look like a hippie. Thirty-six years-old, and I still can't grow a full goatee, much less a beard.) When he was finished, he rubbed down my scalp with a lotion that smelled a little like roses, and dabbed my face with some sort of tonic that felt like an alcohol and smelled vaguely of eucalyptus. Then he handed me a hand-mirror to examine his work. (He never did turn me around to face the wall mirror behind the chair.)
He gave me a $10 haircut, straight out of the 1960s. And it looks like a $10 haircut. Too high in the back, way too high around the ears; a little too bushy here, a little too thin over there. And it is awesome. Exactly what I wanted. Simple, and classic. And more than a little nerdy.
I'm really looking forward to the next time I get to spend some time in Buddy's chair.
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