In the spirit of the season I was going to take my prior post out. Then I re-read it. I was sad and I was angry. Some of the people I love most are from or are descended from residents of Madras. A close friend has friends who are vacationing in Thailand, and he has Indonesian employees.
This is a disaster that has directly affected, or has affected within one degree of separation almost everyone that I know. The world is much smaller now and the after shocks of disasters are felt throughout the world within hours.
My true colors were my own after shock thoughts of 9/11, and how much larger and how much more devastating this was.
I can’t write rationally on this now. I’m sorry that any statement criticizing the government and its lack of immediate action is taken as not loving ones country.
For some reason the news that Jerry Orbach died personally affected me. As I had never liked him when he was on Broadway and only grew to love his character on Law & Order, last year I was mystified by my own response. I shouldn’t have been that sad about somebody I didn’t know.
In order to depersonalize after the death of friends and/or family I have always mourned people that I didn’t know. The Tsnumami felt personal. Every time I see (accidentally) see a picture of dead bodies I feel sick, as I do when Americans are killed in Iraq.
I was and am angry that I almost accept war as being more natural than a natural disaster.
I do and don’t care if people misunderstand me. My brand of liberalism condones no violence. I recently read Susan Braudy’s biography of Kathy Boudin in an attempt to understand why they were resorting to bombing, in the name of the people, when they blew up a townhouse in Greenwich Village in May 1970.
That same week four young students were killed at Kent State by National Guardsman. The students had done nothing wrong. The killings at Kent State did more to propel the anti-war movement forward than any accidental bombings could cause damage.
Kent State was personal. Our parents took a collective look at the four kids who died, and thought that it could have been my child.
More personally Jeffrey Miller came from Plainview. Plainview was a one cigarette, two 3.5 minute radio songs, car ride on the Long Island Expressway from my parents house. I know this well because my on and off again college boyfriend’s parents lived there. The physical resemblance between him and Jeffrey Miller was frightening.
They knew each other. We’re still friends, of a sort, and he still only has to invoke Jeffrey Miller’s name to make me fall into line
I have never understood why people kill–except in self-defense. I don’t like people who break store windows in the name of free trade, or throw paint on fur coats.
I just feel very sad, and even more sad that so many people in this country feel a need to take every comment critical of the government as a call to arms.
