We are beings of contrast and change. Daily we walk the lines between anguish and joy, anger and compassion, despair and hope. The sheer range of emotions defies description, the strength they contain dwarfs the most powerful of titans.
I can recall a winter night during my sophomore year of college. I was visiting my mom in Florida over spring break, and I decided to take a drive. Driving is therapeutic to me. I love having time to myself, to think, to listen to music, and to just experience the feeling of moving.
As I drove along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, windows down, sunroof open with the warm Florida air coursing through my car, I was suddenly overtaken with tears of happiness. Everything just seemed right with the world, and every molecule in my body was brimming over with hope. I can’t explain it; surely it was some kind of cosmic alignment (or for the more cynical, some fortuitous chemical imbalance).
As random as that moment was, others are certainly triggered by those things that we see or hear. It can be a poem. A song. A painting, or a picture.
In our country now (appropriately termed ‘Admerica‘ by the always brilliant Arthur Gilroy), we are constantly under fire from a barrage of visual and audio stimuli. Because of this, we learn to give most things no more than a cursory scan, nary a second’s thought.
Which brings me to this. I am sure most of you have seen this picture before. I first saw it over 20 months ago, and it has haunted me like no other photograph I have ever seen in my life. Please, take a few seconds to look at it, to let it’s image become burned into your soul.
Every fiber of my being cries out in anguish, but still I am unable to tear my eyes away. I can hear the tortured scream issuing forth not from this little girl’s mouth, but from her very heart. The scream echoes inside my head, silencing all other thought except My god, my god what have we done?
We are coming up now on a time when we can set our path to change. It is within our power, and it is nearly in our grasp. And change we must. How many more Iraqi children are to be splattered in their parents blood? How many of our own children are going to continue to live starving in poverty and squalor?
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
– Hubert H. Humphrey
How then, will we be judged? Not well, I think. It is too late to undo what has already been done, but the hour is near at hand for us to turn the tide. Should you, even for a moment, forget how important, how desperate, how urgent it is that we win this fight, let that little Iraqi girl remind you.
for the rambling. Not good at emotion -> words.
Yes you are good. My thanks to you – I needed to see that picture again. It should be published everywhere.
Thanks Alice. I’m not sure I could take it if it were published everywhere though.
Of course, that’s the point.
Please do not apologize for excellent work like this. It reaches right it and squeezes the heart. Thank you for this diary and for touching my heart deeply.
Yeah,
you are good…through and through. I look at that baby, because they’re all babies to me, and I can feel the tears in my gut before they come out of my eyes. Some horrors defy words…and some crimes will never have a sufficient punishment. I see the flashlight beam coming from a soldier and I want to beat the life out of him and scream at them all for lighting her up like that.
Some say it’s the fog of war. Innocents are inevitably killed. I say it’s an in-human, or maybe an inately human way of justifying what we can’t deal with. We have no problem sqeezing off those rounds, or obliterating whole cities, just so long as we needn’t feel the pain. Things like this cause me to think that there’s so much more at stake than just an American election. I think that the fate of the world is at stake, and we are all our own worst enemies because we are so brutal to each other. It’s not only the American way, it’s the human way.
George Bush is a symptom of our species’ madness.
You’re right, it is the human way. We have been killing each other even since our ancestors took their first trip around the sun, I’m sure.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. We need to change the viewpoint, change the paradigm. The number of people in the world who truly do not want to live in peace is infinitesimal. We just need to show the way.
The ability to hope is also part of who we are. Some have more than others. And those of us who are having trouble holding onto it are fortunate to have those like you to remind us to hold on a little tighter :o)
Your words are moving. Thank you.
Beautiful.
Thanks for the reminder. We do need it.
I’ve been trying to mediate a bit on the meaning of “bearing witness” and what that means. Here’s a quote from Bernie Glassman that speaks to the power of your words here:
That is what bearing witness means. Coming to a place like Auschwitz, with all of our differences, in all of our brokenness, we realize that we carry in our own persons the pain of the world, the pain that we usually do not feel strong enough to face. Only when we face it together do we have any chance of becoming whole.
Substitute Iraq for Auschwitz and the meaning of this picture is there for all to see.
She will take a place in my mind beside this little girl from over thirty years ago.
We have learned nothing.
Thank you, ej, for posting this.
Very well said. Thanks.
Thanks for this diary e, it is haunting that photo.
I am very torn these days. For the first time in my life I would consider myself anti-American. And for good reason. I know in my heart that there are good Americans, the folks on Boo attest to that, as well as my many Yank friends and family, but… it is beyond the point for me (or nearing it) where in my mind all Americans are guilty and dangerous… because you see this picture and yet you are not out in the streets, or on strike, or in jail because humanity means more than your own personal comfort.
I am not an American, but I am a citizen of this planet and your actions (and inactions) as a country impact us all. That child, and so many others have been slaughtered, or had their families slaughtered by the sons and daughters of America. How can I forgive that? How can I feel like joking around and snarking with my American friends when I am SO GODDAMN ANGRY with what has happened to your country. Coups and such were always in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t wholesale slaughter and torture and domination. It wasn’t the “Declaration of War against Humanity Act of 2006” (aka the Military Commissions Act of 2006) before. Now, I don’t know.
So I hold my breath for Nov. 7th even though I have not a shred of doubt that the Dems will not win the Senate, hell Rove told us so the other day. Maybe give the House to the Dems, but hey, incumbents since 1996 have won reelection 97% of the time so even tho’ the polls show close races, well… But I hold my breath and hope anyway. If, on Nov. 8th the Dems control both houses, I will hold my nose and try and help you hold them accountable to Dem ideals, but… I fear that those ideals aren’t that different from Bush’s… I fear the most though what happens on Nov. 8th if the Dems don’t win. If the votes are stolen again. Will America finally stand up for democracy?
God I hope so.
I hear you spidey, believe me I do. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve considered just leaving, getting the hell out of here.
I know that there are things about my country that are worth fighting for. It is my hope that things are finally getting to the point that enough people will wake up to fight. There are so many good people here, but those that ‘lead’ us are experts at both propaganda and numbing of social consciousness, and they’ve got the biggest noise machine on the planet on their side.
If we can’t effect change soon, then I’ll be making the same mistake that our government has made in Iraq : fighting a battle without enough troops to win it. And then I’ll know it is time to go.
Thank you for this reminder, ej — beautiful work (as is most that comes from the heart).
What you address, among so many things, is that our ability to respond to our experience, visual or otherwise, must be kept vital in the interest of maintaining our humanity. Our response must not be dulled by overstimulation — which, imo, also deadens the heart. Bearing witness to experience, either joyful or horrible, is a meditation; meditation is connection.
IMO, Bushite control of media imagery is definitely meant to assure this deadening, in terms of basically limiting the experience of human response — while our continual stimulation continues.
Thanks again for a thoughtful, articulate post.
Bearing witness to experience, either joyful or horrible, is a meditation; meditation is connection.
WW, thanks for this. I know my path is leading me to a deeper understanding of this – and you’ve helped me along the way.