Terrors

I have nothing like Dickinson's excuse for my absence--"a terror since September"--but nevertheless I've neglected my blog since the end of August. I've been thinking a lot about troubling things, particularly the consequences of community, the concept of hell, and war as waged by the country that has my allegiance. (Nothing too major, right?)

For a while now, at least since the "Staging War" literature course I took a year and a half ago in Wyoming, I've been well on my way to a pacifist stance. An understanding of violence as perhaps our greatest failure of imagination as human beings certainly makes any war pretty difficult to support. Perhaps many just-war-theory types feel the same way, except for some exceptions in certain circumstances. But I don't think I'll end up in the just war camp (even though I'm all for the good arguments against the invasion of Iraq etc based on such theory).

It's strange to write this down, even though I've obsessed and obsessed over it. There's the fear of being, and sounding, naive. "I just am not okay with ever killing someone. War is bad. The end." There's also the inherent element of hypocrisy--I continue to live as a citizen of the United States and in effect contribute to (even benefit from?) our never-ending occupations in the Middle East.

But there's something else, too, something bigger: the realization that if the majority of Americans came to agree with me, and we really did rethink the utility of violence, there would likely be some very terrible consequences. We would be left vulnerable, open to attack. Many of us would lose our lives. I get it. I get that it would totally suck and that my being okay with such an outcome might be a little extreme. When I consider the alternatives, though, I'm pretty convinced that a pacifist approach is the most reasonable and ethical among the available options.

I wonder if this makes me a coward. Weak. Willing to let the bad guys win. I don't know. But I do know that it's not because I'd be afraid to fire a weapon, or to die. It's because, as Chris Hedges writes, "a soldier who is able to see the humanity of the enemy makes a troubled and ineffective killer." It's because a world like ours, where violence and suffering have become so necessary, isn't a world I care to perpetuate. And it's probably because I can't get Susan Sontag out of my head (Regarding the Pain of Others).

On a more positive note, it's also because of flashes of true imagination that suggest war is not the only way. Flashes like this one, from the interview (with the author) at the back of God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse Mediated by H. L. Hix:

"Bush turns up the volume on his rhetoric depending on who he's talking to, or turns it down, and so does bin Laden. He's also made peace overtures: look, the instant that you stop occupying the lands that we consider sacred, we stop shooting you. In any kind of a dialogue--third graders having a fist fight, or two of the most powerful people on the planet leading others into battle with thousands and thousands of lives as stake--in any kind of dialogue you can either withhold trust from the other person until the other person fulfills your preconditions for attributing trust, or you can insist on trust as a condition of conversation, and grant the trust and cling to it insistently. I can hear someone saying now, we tried to trust him but they flew planes into our buildings, and the other side then makes analogous accusations about different events, so if there's going to be dialogue instead of shooting, somebody has to say, okay I believe that you are a human being who wishes to live and wishes for those you love to have happy and robust lives, and I am going to act as if that is the case no matter what you do. It seems to me that that's a healthier approach."

I for one am up for us trying that approach -- "I believe that you are a human being ... and I am going to act as if that is the case no matter what you do."

A tribute to Dash

I was going to describe exactly why he's the best cat ever, but ...

... need I really say more? I love you, Dash.

The threadbare case against Park51 "mega-mosque"

Only one respectable talking point remains for opponents of Cordoba's planned Muslim-American community center, and it depends on a single phrase -- it's insensitive. This last-ditch argument actually bolsters the case for the development of Park51, at least when we look closely at the meaning of sensitivity and its absence (insensitivity), as well as at the proposed center itself.

While we often associate sensitivity with the experience of being offended or having our feelings hurt, Oxford's first definition of the word sensitive is being "accutely affected by external stimuli or mental impressions; having sensibility [the capability to feel]." Further definitions of the word follow, of course, but this idea of having the capability to feel captures nicely what we mean when using sensitive with positive connotations. Conversely, the word insensitive comes with this description: "unfeeling; boorish; crass." This idea is the one being applied to the Muslim community in New York City, a community that lost some of its own members and loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Now consider Park51's stated vision and answer to the "why now" question: "In the spirit of tolerance and service, the Muslim community of New York envisions a world-class facility and an unprecedented community center as a gesture of our dedication to the city. At a time of economic hardship, Park51 will constitute an investment of over $100 million of infrastructure in lower Manhattan, creating over 150 full-time jobs and over 500 part-time jobs, and providing much-needed space, open to all, for community activities, health and wellness, arts and culture and personal and professional development."

Which words most befit these goals? Ambitious, certainly. Bold. Even courageous, considering the discrimination Muslim Americans continue to face in this country. But insensitive? Nah.

If words are not enough, consider the development plan itself. The complex is intended to include not only a space for prayer but also sports facilities, a library, art studios, a restaurant, a culinary school and "a September 11th memorial and quiet contemplation space, open to all." And the Wall Street Journal reports that the board overseeing the center will include members from other religions in order to, in the words of project partner Daisy Khan, "protect the interests of the center and to ensure the center has the highest standards of transparency." Minarets, by the way, aren't part of the plan.

Cordoba has gone about this whole thing quite sensitively indeed. Their efforts and plans and reactions have in fact demonstrated a solid capacity to feel and sense and consider and adapt, as well as a solid capacity to stand up to fear and deep distortion. I'm glad they're sticking to their (clearly nonviolent) guns, and I wish them the very best in their genuine efforts to foster understanding and peace. I believe folks like those behind Park51 are doing much more constructive things in this world than those who continue to use the horror of Sept. 11 in ways that keep us viewing the world and its dwellers in simplistic, war-mongering ways.

Operations wonderful

Watching the news tonight, I was reminded just how removed the language of modern warfare is from its realities. The host was rattling off several U.S. military operation names, including "Operation Enduring Freedom," "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and, the winner of the most-Twilight-esque badge, "Operation New Dawn." There's apparently as much of an art these days to naming a war as there is to branding anything else.

Operation nicknames haven't always been so aimed at shaping public perception. Prior to World War II, one helpful source explains, color-based operation names were common (e.g., "Operation Indigo"), and even after 1945 the list of military operations includes a number of color-, region- and content-based names. But in 1989, officials under President Bush termed the invasion of Panama "Operation Just Cause," and similarly agenda-driven nicknames have followed since.

Is this embedded form of persuasion to pro-war sentiment simply how things have to be in a marketing-savvy world? I hope not. It's one thing for Pepsi to suggest that drinking their cola makes you cool or unique in addition to quenching your thirst. It's quite another thing for the United States to suggest that occupying lands outside its realm and killing fellow human beings is all part of making freedom endure. War is at its heart a destructive enterprise. It is the deepest failure of human imagination, and when we engage in it (these days, apparently without end) we ought to acknowledge that reality, not whitewash it.

When the U.S. initiated nuclear testing, the powers that be named it "Operation Crossroads." Perhaps a slight misnomer considering the consequences?

Here are some alternative nicknames, though I fear they will not see military ink: 1) For the ongoing war Afghanistan, let's call it "Operation that Must Succeed Even If It Can't" or "Operation No Plan B." 2) Instead of "Operation New Dawn" for this latest announced phase in Iraq, let's go with "Operation Apology for American Exceptionalism." Eh. These could be better.

Some recent shots

Impressions of Butler's "Dear Sound of Footstep"

Sometimes first impressions are misleading, and that was the case with Dear Sound of Footstep (Sarabande 2009), an essay collection by Ashley Butler that I picked up at the publisher's table at AWP in Denver this spring.

On first reading, the writing was impressive, but the book wasn't engrossing me. I only managed a few pages at a time, and it felt like work to pick it up again and again. Described by the back-cover blurbers as "innovative," "daring" and "eloquent," the book delivered on all these fronts, but I wasn't drawn in like I'd hoped. I plugged away at it, but I was giving up on the text so frequently--and the essays were ending and beginning so rapidly--that there was no sense of continuity or development.

But these are lyric essays, if anything is, and I picked the book up again last week to see what I could discover from Butler's technique. And on second reading, I found a lot more to appreciate about her work.

In some ways reminding me of those in Lia Purpura's On Looking, the essays in Dear Sound of Footstep link ideas and anecdotes that in any other context would appear un-connectable to one another. Butler's discussion of her mother's debilitating disease and slow death is the most obvious theme, but it is really one among many recurring threads. The book describes scientific exploration, failed experiments and dreams, interaction with Butler's father and sister, Houdini's death, and the five senses. The variety and order can seem random at times in the book, but for me more connections appeared the second time--so that, for instance, an essay titled "Crime Scene" that references everything from syrup bubbling up through the tongs of a fork to Butler's first childhood conversation with her mother about what happens after death left me with more than mere befuddlement.

Some of the essays could be categorized poems, and, not surprisingly, these are the essays that continue to leave me very much in the dark, even on second reading. Still, I enjoyed the literary frolic of many of them, even though I felt like I "didn't get it." In one essay marked by aphorisms made new (and in many cases made completely inscrutible to me), Butler writes, "Hyperboles happen in happiness and horror, in sickness and in stealth. People say true dreams come but true love depends on optics. If a mark is significantly longer than it is wide, then a line has been drawn. If two lines converge on a plane, then a vanishing appears in one's future." If I try to figure out a paragraph like that, I end up frustrated. Sometimes it's best just sit back and enjoy, see what comes to mind, what light these statements shed on the world.

In an interview available on Sarabande's site, Butler notes that in her book and "in writing in general ... openness is important, that is, to try to make a space so something can pass through." Butler seems to accomplish that goal in Dear Sound, even though as readers we may not be able to put our finger precisely on what just passed.

Her brief description in "The Book of Concealed Hearts" of what I'm assuming is the 2007 collapse of the Minneapolis bridge is stunning, and unadorned, akin to the kind of conversations and news broadcasts in Don't Let Me Be Lonely (Claudia Rankine). Butler's record of the questions of a reporter and the answers of a rescuer is sticking with me, along with this, oddly my favorite moment in the book:

"Hunter agreed to go on a [medical helicopter] flight a few months ago. On the drive to the hospital, however, she crested a hill and found the truck in her lane had been hit ... Adam lands right in front of her. He's not allowed to get out of the helicopter because it's all about speed. She imagines him looking back through the shield attached to his helmet, imagines herself as the patient then medic. He's advised to stare straight ahead so he doesn't get emotionally involved. He has to fly a different direction depending on how a body is injured. If you get burned you go to Dallas. If you get crushed you go to Abilene."

So many doors, so many locks, and other adventures

I live a block away from this ...

... and I finally ventured inside it this week (it being the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, on which work continued over the course of 80 years).

I happened inside the door only minutes before 5 p.m., which as it turns out is closing time. I explored the various chapels and read through the ornately posted beatitudes for several peaceful moments. And then I turned to go, to continue on to the grocery store down the street.

But the narthex door was locked! And the other front door. And the other. I scurried as reverently but quickly as possible back into the sanctuary and up the left side aisle. Hooray! A side door. But no. It too was sealed shut.

Just as I began resigning myself to the prospect of sleeping on one of the pews, I heard a sound. A door closing. I raced to the right side of the altar and around toward one of the chapels. And a nice older gentleman tour guide kindly let me escape. Phew!