Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine times out of one hundred, people are okay: definitely quirky, truly strange, undoubtedly weird, and yes, perhaps freakish, awkward, sometimes repellent — but not abusive, not cruel, not insane, not homicidal. Each time I leave the house, I want to remember that. Each time I interact with strangers, I want them to remember that. Each time my eyes meet those of a stranger’s, I want to remember kindness. To that end, I am going to do thirty-one things, ninja-sneaky, to keep faith with peace. Thirty-one things to remind myself that we are people of the light. If we walk in the light, not everyone is out to get us. If we light our lights, we make the night brighter for everyone.
At the New Year in 2013 I wrote those words, determined that there was something better to look toward than the news, and that I was going to find it. It was too easy to merely be cynical, too easy to live in the dregs of bitterness, and forget that the world has light.
However, sometimes, it just seems dark.
I wrote all of this before the various bombings in Turkey and Europe, in the midst of the wave of police violence against unarmed persons. Now I look at wonder about adjusting that “ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine” percent of “okayness” I gave people. Are we really all so bad, or so good? I don’t know. Is it just that more of us are looking now, that we are finally woken up?
I lost a lot of friends, as a teen. It seemed like a lot, anyway. One suicide; four drunk driving accidents, where they were either victim or driver; two senseless “chance” accidents, and one from disease. Between junior high and college, it seemed like I was doing a lot of singing at funerals with our high school chorus, writing a lot of condolence cards. The worst death was April 19, 1993 in McLennan County, Texas, just outside the town of Waco.
Vietnam vets talk about the war having cured them of patriotism, and while I cannot understand, I can empathize. This loss, the end of so many things, scoured me of innocence, childhood, and anything resembling faith in those in “authority.” I am not able to talk about the events of that day with any kind of neutrality. It will always remain government-sanctioned murder; else what other cause for poisonous CS gas, a substance banned for use in warfare under Geneva accords signed by the United States in 1973? What other cause for a dawn raid with helicopters and armored vehicles?
I will tell you five simple truths, and attempt not to be maudlin: one, a 24-year-old sister went out to seek meaning in the world. Two, she found a dangerous, charismatic man, with whom, her parents were embarrassed and angry to learn, she had a child. Three, her sister, 19 – my friend -, extending her personal olive branch, flew out to see her. The sisters enjoyed their time together with the year-old child. One tried to coax the other home. One tried to coax the other to stay.
Five, they each ran out of time.
Every day I look ahead. Every day, I want to talk of light, and hope, and the indomitable human spirit… but, especially after a week like this, sometimes all you’ve got is the dark.
And you sit with it. And you breathe.
elegy, twenty twenty-three years on
box steps, they hedged us in four/four
she led, I stumbled ‘cross the floor
more awkward dancers since unseen
one tall, one short and plump, one lean.
The ballad – Beatles – sung in French
Was only Muzak. Now a wrench
Goes through me at that tenor croon.
Ma belle, she danced us to the tune
Of innocence, of girlish ploys,
Of drama, gossip, clothes, and boys
And with her loss, my childhood ends.
She suffered. I cannot pretend.
There is a truth that nothing mends:
My government has killed my friend –
Though years have passed the thought refrains,
– and I will not trust them again.
…
…
An elegy, the poets say
Is meant, in words, to show the way
A person grieves, the stages met —
It seems I’m not quite finished yet.
T.S. Davis, ©2013
