war

When will the stickers come down?

2002-01-18T03:47:46+00:00

Summer came and went, and autumn glided in, soft and quiet like sunset. The leaves on the oaks turned neon yellow and cherry red, and then began to float down and away. Given the timing this year, it was almost as though the trees were made of American flags instead of bare twigs and branches; the more leaves fell, the more I noticed the flags.

Everywhere. I had come to take it for granted that I only saw the flags of my country by the courthouse and the nearby middle school. Every time I ventured out this fall, there were more of them, the previously-ignored symbol suddenly a commodity.

It was the bumper sticker to have. Flag ties, tie pins, earrings, shirts. What was it about eagles and the phrase "United We Stand" that made me feel alienated instead of united?

Perhaps it was my teenage bemusement and disdain for the cultural gimmickry that came to be associated with the 'Gulf War'—how fervent patriotism faded first into cracking bumper stickers and quaintly-patriotic shirts that started showing up in the fifty-cent boxes at flea markets.

Patriotism, like MTV's latest and greatest video, had been simply the current fad. When the need faded, the visible reminders faded.

One of the first things I did after receiving my bachelor's in 1998 was to take a razor blade to the window of my car. I scraped off the years of university parking stickers with a dual feeling of relief and revulsion—time to get rid of this relic from my past. I wondered if the fine, upstanding American adults with their faded bumper stickers commemorating a not-war felt the same way when they took razor blades to their own vehicles.

Over the past few months I've watched with equal amounts horror and fascination as the area I lived in turned from general apathy to fervent patriotism. What could possibly be more middle-American than a mother driving her kids around in a SUV plastered with stickered and magnetic flags? United We Stand, yes, but for what? Rampant consumerism?

There's something wickedly and deliciously ironic about a gas-guzzling SUV, its very lifeblood emerging from Middle Eastern pipelines, displaying stickers (undoubtedly made in China) proclaiming our unity against …. a certain batch of Middle Easterners.

I applaud these people for their patriotism. I hope it is genuine. I hope they teach their children to love the land of their birth, but teach them that love can't be blind, can't be all-encompassing. There is nothing more insidiously damaging than to teach generations of children to believe the phrase "My country, right or wrong!"

Remember the declension: We spread patriotism; they spread propaganda.

I just find myself wondering how long it will take before the flag pins are no longer sold from the impulse-buy bin at checkouts, the stickers are scraped away, the t-shirts sold at flea markets. Until the mumbling mass of Americana, more interested in their own lives than the lives of the rest of the world, decides to collectively shrug their shoulders and get back to their regularly scheduled lives.

I expect the leaves will be back first.

Jingoism, in any form

2001-10-12T02:18:11+00:00

Yesterday I purchased many, many bulbs for the front flowerbeds. Fifty assorted daffodil bulbs, fifty assorted tulips, and a combined package of grape hyacinths and some other small flower whose name escapes me.

I went out this morning to plant the bulbs, and found that the ground was virtually too packed for me to shovel. Alabama red clay mud, when packed solid and baked slowly until dry, is virtually impervious to all man and beast (except, of course, fire ants, which can tunnel through plutonium and survive, I'd think).I managed to dig a few small trench rows, in which I laid alternating bulbs—tulip, daffodil, tulip, daffodil. After that, having spent far more time than I wanted with far fewer results than I would've liked, I gave up, put the shovel back on the porch, and went back inside.

It wasn't until early evening until I remembered that I was supposed to return a movie today; a task forgotten amidst the attempts to get the bulbs planted. I put the curry on to simmer and grabbed keys and wallet, hoping to get to the store and back before the encroaching storms reached the house.

I turned on the radio, juggling stations until I found music. At that point I caught up with some traffic and stopped channel-surfing, so as to concentrate on my driving. My mind drifted, concentrating on accelerator, brake, and steering. The song ended, and the announcer began detailing their latest contest.

Caller number 10 on WZYP would be the latest addition to their pool of contestants for Smashmouth's San Francisco concert. The winner would be determined by—if I recall it right—having each contestant get into a crane while holding a pumpkin.

On the ground below them would be a large bulls-eye, with a picture of Osama bin Laden at the center. Whoever got the closest to hitting the picture with their pumpkin would win the tickets.

They followed this up immediately afterward by a song redone in "Blow Em Up Style," which had the entire first verse and chorus changed to detail exactly how we were going to blow up Afghanistan and bin Laden.

I was ashamed.

I didn't laugh. I didn't think it was funny. We are horrified because "they" glorify war; I'm horrified because we make such light of it. There's absolutely nothing funny about taunting someone that we're going to blow up their country; it's more akin to waving a red flag in front of a snarling, seething bull.

There's nothing quite like the braggadocio of saying, essentially, "We're gonna whip out the Good Old U.S. Military, whip your Middle Eastern ass, and make you like it!" to piss off the rest of the world.

When they do it, it's propaganda, it's attempting to incite the people to riot, to wage war. Yet for us, it's something funny and disposable to play on a radio station.

Then tonight the president refers to Muslim women as "women of cover." I groaned. Jeff groaned. Some speechwriter actually thought that was a good idea.

I don't deny the reason for our attacking Afghanistan. But if I'm going to question and make fun of the ads that appear on my television, I'm going to apply the same standard to the unofficial war ads that are being played as music on local radio stations. I understand the anti-bin Laden fervor. But I dislike jingoism in any form. Pro-American it may be, but it is jingoism nonetheless.

An accounting of the day

2001-09-12T02:00:53+00:00

I am part of the chain.

Jeff, on the answering machine this morning: "Amy, turn on the television now."
Ten minutes later, to Kat: "Kat, turn on your television now. What channel? Any channel."
To Brad: "What are they saying up there? Please, tell me something I don't know already."
To Andrew: "Hold on, hold on….my God. It's gone."
To Heather: "Is Andy okay? Have you heard?"
To John: "Can you believe? Can you comprehend?"I sat, cross-legged, in front of the television as I mourned the loss of life and our loss of innocence. How ironic to state that anything about America, this crass old jaded bitch of a country, is innocent—yet we never, ever believed that a day like this would come.

I saw the footage of the second plane slamming into the WTC with a mix of horror, fright, and nausea. I am the person who can watch anything in cinema with the comforting knowledge that it is all faked, and that at the end of the scene, the actors get up and walk away.

By the same token, I cannot watch "reality" shows; the caring, nurturing part of me cannot bear to see that kind of pain and torment. But I watched this morning—I made myself watch. I grieved as the plane exploded … inside … the building, knowing.

This was no scene.
These were no actors.

The knowledge that you are watching someone die is horrifying, awful. Imagine multiplying that single incident by hundreds, thousands, and you understand my horror and anguish as I watched the towers fall like so many glass cards.

I did not cry. I have not cried. Yet. But I fear the tears pushing at the corners of my eyes as I write this, as I make myself come to grips with what I saw this morning, this afternoon, this evening, shoved at me over and over again.

I fear this is not over. I fear this means war. I fear myself because my heart says, "Find the motherfuckers and blow them to bits."

Death is the original unsolvable puzzle. Once life, and peace, and innocence, are undone, the thing cannot be mended. Even more death—justice though it may be, and richly deserved it may be—will not bring back our innocence—or the dead.

Lastly, to my mother: "We are safe, we are okay, we love you."

Sirocco

2001-06-13T04:08:09+00:00

It was the cherry-time of the summer season,
and you were gone—and back—in the breath of a year.
The posters on the walls warned of spies, and treason,
and the sins of idleness. You spoke not of fear,

of loss, but instead: dancing, drinks, shore leave -
of when we could be like other couples again,
sedately married, with no need for Navy reprieve.
I bobbed my hair in eager anticipation

of reunion, and opened your letters with knives
kept sharp to protect the flimsy paper inside.
In May, the letters stopped coming. Were you alive
or dead? Only in June did the Navy decide

to tell me to grow my hair out again. A note
(unfinished, in your kit) told me of a present
given you from another soldier. Then you wrote
of love, death, and war—then left the letter unsent,

waiting for Stephen to find, crumpled, in your gear.
His invitation arrived as the pumpkins grew,
marmalade-glossy, at the exhale of the year.
Would it be possible—him, the ship…? For me to

come to the port for a night of dance and memory?
My lack of reply served as sufficient answer.
I arrived in afternoon; low heels, dress flimsy,
prepared for a quiet dinner, nothing after.

Dinner led to drinks, and drinks to dance, and then I,
the widow, the girl, walked across to the hotel,
the pool, and—at last—to bed. Stephen was alive
when you were not, and it was my choice: to revel

in December life, instead of mourning your death.
Afterward, he traced the line of a missing ring
and offered to give me your gift. With one small breath
I could have refused, but instead I chose to bring

present to past and back again. Pale silk, they were;
seamed, delicate, glowing silver-soft in his hand.
He drew back the rough sheets and prepared to confer
the gift from a dead soldier-boy, another land.

An extended foot, followed by a dainty roll
of silk, and hands, and hotel light; and then, he said—
later—"After the war, you should give me a call."
Although he left me his number, I never did.

* * * *

(So, it occurred to me that, way back when, the best thing to give your girl in a time of rationing and shortage was a pair of coveted silk stockings. But what happens to a gift when the giver is gone, but the gift is not yet given? I suppose, if you're a lucky girl, someone else comes along and makes sure the gift gets where it's supposed to be.)