the thoughts that came willy-nilly after reading this
Sometimes I read stuff online or I hear stuff on the radio or I listen to someone I know talking, and I'm overwhelmed by the suchness of it all and I just can't think about it, any of it, anymore. Someone over here is wondering whether or not global warming exists and someone over there is wondering why Cardinal Mahoney gets to go over to Rome and help pick out a pope when his decision-making abilities have surely been questioned as being less than ethical and then that someone over there thinks hero worship of the disabled is something to be denigrated and while I might know on some level what they're saying -- I know what you're saying, but -- sometimes it's too much suchness and I want to say calmly and matter of factly I don't care. I actually got a thrill when I watched Pretorius' silver blades running down the track and never once entertained the thought that he was less than or even more than despite, despite being the operative word. It was just a beautiful thing. So, I'm in the mood to call a spade a spade, a blade a leg, a blade a blade, a gun a gun and when a person has a gun something bad might happen. I personally don't want to defend myself or my kin with a gun and I have no idea what I'd do if threatened but when that person says they'd have no problem shooting the guy dead, it's too much such and I just can't think about it, any of it, anymore.
I love that you put words to that feeling. I am sometimes weighed down by all of the analysis and rhetoric and want to just lie down and utter simple phrases like, "honoring each other" and "pure love." I am too often reminded that those people we revere are very much human and the high offices and award categories are inhabited by humans and we are, all of us, flawed and imperfect but that it can all be reduced to love and compassion being the answers we forsake or forget about to our detriment.
ReplyDeleteArt is as heavy as sorrow and if there is a gun in anybody's hand when the awful thing occurs, somebody is very possibly going to end up dead. I don't know if Pistorius is guilty or just had too quick a trigger finger. but he did love guns, he said as much, and he had many of them in the house. The whole thing makes me heavy with sorrow. Because that man, those blades at the Olympics, that was art.
ReplyDeleteI'm so feeling this. In fact I'm painting a bunny about It this such thing right now!
ReplyDeleteWilly-NIlly...I love that you said that. It made me smile. That's all I've got on this Friday evening.
ReplyDeleteI hear you. The suchness. It's too much. So often i find myself complicit in my silence where left and right are goings-ons meritorious at the very least of a whaaaaaaaaaatt???! and emphatic fist shaking and enough is enough! But i'm left slack-jawed, disbelieving, insecure in my own logic and words, paralyzed by the gravity and enormity of it all. There's more i want to comment on this, but i need to hone that whole forming words and convictions into cogent sentences before i'm overwhelmed by the task and throw in the all-too-blank white towel.
ReplyDeleteI just don't know what to think about that blog post. I suppose it's inevitable when you're held up as a role model that some people will hate you for it. That's the first time I've heard anyone express such anger about Helen Keller, though!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, Oscar Pistorius did not have a spotless history on the domestic-violence front. Perhaps the same energy that drives some driven people can also compel a sort of darkness of the soul.