A German prisoner of war lights the cigarette of a British soldier, World War I.
Nationaal Archief
Remember
Methinks the lady doth protest too much… or a lesson on expectations
The tensile drama that exists between man and woman is based upon many things but primarily that of biology and expectation. Unlike the static worlds addressed in fiction, the challenge of maneuvering the ebb and flow of relationships in reality alter, subject to the erosion of time. The water kisses the shore only to recede into the distance…united in an eternal struggle and obediant to a force distant and too near, sternly watchful and serene. We play, imagining ourselves constantly observed with no foreseeable conclusion in sight.
So many lives have been lost that we may live in relative ease. So many lives are continually lost in the name of freedom, nation, in the past called empire or God. These are ideas. But the human cost of war and the protection of these ideas is very real. The men and women who survive, often do not survive completely intact. One can’t know what an immense sacrifice these people who go off to fight wars in the name of ideas must endure, each one a story of loss and gain. What they must know. We, who haven’t had such experience cannot know what it is to reconcile what they know with what they thought they knew of life. I wonder if it is within the human constitution to do so. And yet these men and women persist is spite of great personal costs. And for the many sacrifices that have been made so that I may live to have ideas…I want to say thank you. Thank you so very much. May this memorial day find you at peace.
“New York State Senator Eric Adams and his colleagues honored Trayvon Martin on Monday by wearing hoodies to the March 26, 2012 Senate legislative session in Albany.”
via Colorlines
The Hoodie Affair
Rachel Helie
There are many views on how this played out, many ways that each character (for lack of a better word) will be demonized or glorified. It all boils down to this. Two human beings found themselves face to face and one did not walk away living. Treyvon Martin’s parents will mourn the loss of their son for the rest of their lives. Mr. Zimmerman will be facing himself in the mirror for as long as he lives. He is now a man who has committed murder. He took another life, a life that did not belong to him and that was not his to take. His soul will forever bare that mark. if such a thing exists. He and Treyvon will be bound together, wrapped in the grief of a nation.
What bothers me about the national response to this tragic event is the escalation of the same rhetoric that has been employed since humanity first became self-aware. After all of this time we still think in such compartmentalized ways. One set calls it race baiting, one set calls it hate crime. But, truly, that is narrow thinking on both sides.
Several years back, three boys were sentenced to life in prison. The West Memphis Three were a group of white boys who liked heavy metal music. And for that they found themselves behind bars for murders they did not commit. Their youth was robbed from them as sure as the young boys they were accused of murdering. This case comes to mind when I hear people judge the appearance of Trayvon Martin. He wore a hoodie and acting like a silly teenage boy. I can’t think of a single person I know who doesn’t own one, and none of them belong to a “gang”. I can’t think of a single person who has not behaved in a ridiculous manner in their youth. Young people the world over find solace, solidarity, or simply anonymity by conforming to the standard of their peer group. Adults perpetuate it in their lives as well. But that conformity does not constitute a certain behavior pattern.
There are good people who do bad things. There are bad people who do good things. The motives can be questioned but never understood. We are complex creatures, we humans. Maybe we should start thinking like it. Compartmentalizing our problems into tidy packages never got us anywhere good (see also: Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust, slavery, class warfare).
The point of this is that not one person should demand that any other human being ”get over it” when it comes to race division. You are talking to a person who comes from a tradition of IMPOSED silence and obedience. To demand that a child or grandchild of a person who remembers what it was like to be forced to remain silent about the injustices that occurred, not 200 years ago but fifty, is insensitive and naive. But, likewise, for a person to turn around and point the finger at a group of people who are colored a certain way and say that by virtue of their color they are complicit in actions they never perpetuated… Well, that is just as narrow minded.
Let’s try to be cautious and circumspect about any rush to judgement when emotions run high. Let’s mourn the end of lives which were each in their own way beautiful and fragile. Because though Zimmerman lives, his sentence is a life living with what he has done. He has robbed the world of not just one life, but innumerable lives. And that includes his own.
What we can hope is that he spends the rest of his life attempting to atone for what he has done and by the consequence of that atonement he makes the world a somewhat better place. It seems to be a human compulsion to hold others accountable before ourselves. That is what Zimmerman has done to a T. And look at what happened.
“It’s a little weird and creepy, but I’m okay with it.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of Space Chronicles, on what it feels like to be an internet meme.
We bookish types are hot-blooded. They don’t tell you that. I mean, there is the sexy librarian myth but that applies to looks specifically. You see, a person who is tapped into the libidinous mind finds heat in life where it otherwise would not exist. It is the power of an active imagination.
Libraries are quiet, and if you are lucky, cavernous. I have particularly fond memories of my early attempts at seduction between the stacks. The smell of old paper and ink is already one of my favorite things…combined with moist lips and hands gripping hips it escalated into erratic passions. The excitement of exposure and the knowledge that centuries upon centuries of common urge compiled in verse and stories compels us is intoxicating. Find a breast under a buttoned shirt, or explore a thigh in a close study room. Take all of the weight of a million desires home and finish the story with a flourish.
