Reflections on 8 January 2011
So, I wrote a thing. About the events in Tucson today. I don't know if it's prose, or poetry, or prose-poetry, or what.
My grocery store - the one I know the clerks at, the one I worked for, the one with my go-to deli counter - is in the news today.
Some guy shot my congresswoman there this morning - Point blank in the head. The bullet went straight through her skull.
-I think that’s why she’s still alive: he was too close, the gun packed too much punch, (semi-automatic, extended clip, nineteen people wounded, six who died, and one a child).
The judge who died had just stopped by to say hello. A sunny Saturday, and Gabrielle a friend.
I still don’t know if anyone I worked with was wounded or a witness (though I’m sure the store is reeling still with lockdown and police and helicopters landing in the street). I’ve stood right there; I can feel the texture of the bricks that now have bullet-holes in tactile memory. Just yesterday I and my sister bought tequila - Patron Silver - as a gift for our family gather. We were right there. I know that Place.
And now that Place will never be the same. (Tucson, Arizona, District 8 - everyone knows those facts today. Democrat (Blue dog) winning in a old-guard Republican stronghold: Giffords, Gabrielle, who took her third-term oath but days ago. It will be trivia someday. Right now none of it is.)
I met her once, just weeks ago. (I have the date on the receipt - I bought a book; there was a stop on the Zero Emissions race at Bookmans, and one of the cars was a converted Model T running on sunlight, selling ice-cream - she was there, with other Tucson notables, and random people walking by, like me: 23 November 2010). I got to shake her hand and thank her, glad she still represented me, thankful she had won her seat again. My feet remember the feel of parking-lot asphalt, my fingers remember her thin-boned hand, grip firm and sure. She thanked me for my presence and support - and I could tell she meant it, asked and heard my name. (And oh, she’s tiny, maybe five-foot-two or -three, and beautifully dressed, with Presence that just shines.)
I really hope to have that chance again, that others do, that she comes through this still herself (and ours - is it wrong to think her so? Not that we-her-district-people own her, but that there is a tie, a real connection, reciprocal and right - I cannot think that wrong) and fighting for the things that she believes. I have to hold hard to that hope. And I know I’m not alone with candles burning, vigilant and bright.
There is a crack in the fabric here, bleeding grief. -Oh not unique, not with Columbine, Virginia Tech, so many other horrors other places, other times. No life should be lost in such a way.
But I live here. I know this place, that intersection (Oracle and Ina, a state route and a major interstate approach - traffic will have been messed up all day). This is my home, where I grew up (however much the Bay is heart-home, still the desert owns a part of me, and always will) and where I dwell.
Mayhap this may be a wake up call, a clarion to hear the words we speak, and think before we say them. That vitriol and violence of what is said is legal does not mean there is no consequence: this is that consequence. Now let it stop. Let each of us attend to what we say, and what those words might mean.
For such words are not just letters of lead, for which the consequences must be taken, but here made leaden bullets, taking lives.
This entry was originally posted at http://lferion.dreamwidth.org/202026.html, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.
My grocery store - the one I know the clerks at, the one I worked for, the one with my go-to deli counter - is in the news today.
Some guy shot my congresswoman there this morning - Point blank in the head. The bullet went straight through her skull.
-I think that’s why she’s still alive: he was too close, the gun packed too much punch, (semi-automatic, extended clip, nineteen people wounded, six who died, and one a child).
The judge who died had just stopped by to say hello. A sunny Saturday, and Gabrielle a friend.
I still don’t know if anyone I worked with was wounded or a witness (though I’m sure the store is reeling still with lockdown and police and helicopters landing in the street). I’ve stood right there; I can feel the texture of the bricks that now have bullet-holes in tactile memory. Just yesterday I and my sister bought tequila - Patron Silver - as a gift for our family gather. We were right there. I know that Place.
And now that Place will never be the same. (Tucson, Arizona, District 8 - everyone knows those facts today. Democrat (Blue dog) winning in a old-guard Republican stronghold: Giffords, Gabrielle, who took her third-term oath but days ago. It will be trivia someday. Right now none of it is.)
I met her once, just weeks ago. (I have the date on the receipt - I bought a book; there was a stop on the Zero Emissions race at Bookmans, and one of the cars was a converted Model T running on sunlight, selling ice-cream - she was there, with other Tucson notables, and random people walking by, like me: 23 November 2010). I got to shake her hand and thank her, glad she still represented me, thankful she had won her seat again. My feet remember the feel of parking-lot asphalt, my fingers remember her thin-boned hand, grip firm and sure. She thanked me for my presence and support - and I could tell she meant it, asked and heard my name. (And oh, she’s tiny, maybe five-foot-two or -three, and beautifully dressed, with Presence that just shines.)
I really hope to have that chance again, that others do, that she comes through this still herself (and ours - is it wrong to think her so? Not that we-her-district-people own her, but that there is a tie, a real connection, reciprocal and right - I cannot think that wrong) and fighting for the things that she believes. I have to hold hard to that hope. And I know I’m not alone with candles burning, vigilant and bright.
There is a crack in the fabric here, bleeding grief. -Oh not unique, not with Columbine, Virginia Tech, so many other horrors other places, other times. No life should be lost in such a way.
But I live here. I know this place, that intersection (Oracle and Ina, a state route and a major interstate approach - traffic will have been messed up all day). This is my home, where I grew up (however much the Bay is heart-home, still the desert owns a part of me, and always will) and where I dwell.
Mayhap this may be a wake up call, a clarion to hear the words we speak, and think before we say them. That vitriol and violence of what is said is legal does not mean there is no consequence: this is that consequence. Now let it stop. Let each of us attend to what we say, and what those words might mean.
For such words are not just letters of lead, for which the consequences must be taken, but here made leaden bullets, taking lives.
This entry was originally posted at http://lferion.dreamwidth.org/202026.html, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.