"And love...wish the world could go again with love.
One can't seem to have enough.
And war,...break the sky and tell me what it's for." Eddie Vedder
CBS News Crew Killed in Baghdad. I am so overcome with this whole situation that I've finally broken down and cried.
I feel at this moment that whatever it is we take for granted, as we bumble our way through our lives of relative peace and quiet, that we should stop it. What would happen if everyone stopped for a day and paid attention? What is going on here? HOW ARE THINGS IMPROVING? Who is going to speak up when no one is demanding that anyone say anything?
Who is going to stop this administration from using its last two years in office to lay the groundwork for Jeb to take over and continue the march into Iran and North Korea? Who is going to stop the people who abuse others in the name of protecting us?
The news story of the murdered newsmen is currently running on the home page of the Washington Post, unintentionally ironically alongside the requisite ridiculous photo of George Bush in his requisite useless Memorial Day trip to Arlington Cemetery. I have a great grandfather buried there, and I'm sorry that he has to be anywhere near this man, decades-dead as he is...even more decades after he dutifully served in World War I, and then dutifully sent eight sons to the United States Navy and Coast Guard. They all came home. My grandmother's brother wasn't so lucky. He was handsome, and looks in photographs as though he was smart and funny. He was blown up in Italy in World War II, and they could never even find him to send him home. My godfather went over there in the 70s and saw what he thought was a monument to him, although he couldn't be sure. There are pictures of that somewhere, too.
Then, I think they knew better what they were fighting for - or at least the country did. Although even then we waited years before acknowledging the slaughter of millions of Jews and gays and Gypsies, before we set about decades of reparation in the form of museums and monuments that will never, ever be enough when you think about the families destroyed, the love lost, and the cultural chasms that can never be filled. Then, regardless, there was a societal sense of order in this country, a belief in the sanctity of so many things that we laugh at now, whether we know it or not. I've had several conversations lately about what in the world we are to expect from this society in the near and far future - how there are rises and falls in every great nation, and it seems that our general attitude is that we're not on the upswing. I sat and held my gorgeous new baby cousin yesterday, and her grandfather - my uncle - said, "It's scary to think what the next 70 years will hold. Really, what kind of world are you bringing them into?" And I have to say that I really don't know.
I wouldn't trade some of the advances of the past fifty years, for sure. I'd have made a crappy full-time housewife, I look much better in jeans than I do in long skirts, and I don't understand subservience to a man. I am grateful for the progress of the Civil Rights Movement, and for the chance for blacks to better speak their minds, and to have equal access (as flawed as that is too.) I have friends who are gay, amongst all of the other wonderful things they are, and I'm happy that they can live this truth openly, at least more openly than they could have then. (Although of course I live in a fairly open, coastal region. I can't pretend that Matthew Shepard wasn't killed in Wyoming just a few short years ago. Some things remain so far behind.)
But as much as I wouldn't trade, what I wish we could shake is this sense of numb overdependence on the idea that if we trust in technology and the march of capitalism (what the pols call "democracy"), that we'll all be okay. I would bring back some sense of humanity that would wake people up to the fact that people are dying the world over as a result of hubris, and a particularly Republican sense of the righteousness of war. I'd remind them that a man was just found dead in his house YESTERDAY from Hurricane Katrina, and nobody noticed or checked the building for a year. I'd warm us up a good bit, and smarten us up a lot. I'd have us unplug ourselves a little and put our feet in the dirt and yank our heads out of it. Because, when it comes down to it, I hate reality television. I think I hate television in general. I love music, but I'm not as much of a fan of the iPod as I thought I'd be. I like it okay, but I still like the feel of a cd (and, I have to admit, a tape) in my hands. Even better, I love the sound of someone singing live, as nothing on record can really touch that connection when it works. My cell phone drives me crazy, more often than not. I'm forever losing it, and usually whatever someone has to tell me...well, they could have saved it. I've saved several messages on it since I got it that I'll likely never erase until I switch phones, and that's because I wanted to hear that person's voice - not really what they had to tell me in a hurry or on the road. And e-mail...it's starting to bum me out too. I have friends who don't call, even when they have the number and know where I am. They prefer the "convenience" of the electronic chat. What I think is that we hide behind them. I know I do sometimes. We get seduced into this quasi-personal style of relationships, and it distances us without realizing it from what's really important. I sat with that baby yesterday and just loved the feeling of being there with another breathing person, not really formed yet - at least not her attitudes and opinions, beyond that of being hungry and wanting to be left alone to sleep. It was nice to just be silent and still, and connect with a human being non-verbally. It just doesn't happen very often. There's so much chatter and defense.
So more people died today and I'm sure there will be stories all over the place about it, because they were news people, along to cover the war - not really people who were meant to get killed in it, although certainly it seems to be a free-for-all over there where a human life is worth less than a soccer ball. They had kids and wives, just like the Iraqi men who get killed in Baghdad because they go to a particular corner of it to replace their ID and they're picked out as not Sunni. Or the story someone sent me yesterday about guys getting KILLED over there because they're wearing SHORTS.
It's all gross, and pathetic, and sad...and something I have to admit that I don't even know how to process because there are so many parts of it that don't hang together in my own little myopic view of the universe. But I think that if we are people of conscience, that we'll have to allow this war, this ongoing quest for world domination, this societal acceptance of an unacceptable situation (because we are all complacently accepting it, when it comes down to it - we watch it and comment and then move along) to change us a little bit. We don't really, so much. It's a cliche to "hate" George Bush, and to laugh about Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney using people for target practice. We can't come up with a reasonable alternative, except for maybe Oprah for President (who would DEFINITELY get elected now that she's reputed to be a hip hop hata.)
We have to let it in, even if it's only to decide to live our lives for something extra, something beyond the material. I don't know how mine fits in exactly, yet. I think (and have thought for some time) that I have to change it - that I have to actively wake up to the horror that I witness and at the very least talk or write about it in a focused manner, because when it comes to skills and power, that's all I got. I just don't know what that means yet. This year is telling an interesting tale so far, but today I got stopped in my tracks by the guys from CBS who died, and that's really pretty much all that's on my mind, and I feel pretty deflated about it, and more than a little sick.
There are a gazillion new photos up on the flickr site. At least. One of my weekend goals was to get my photo files organized and to get the flickr stuff posted, because I knew if I didn't before the summer started in full swing, I'd never catch up. The downloading just takes that long. 
The new sets are all on the right-hand side. The PG201 set is all from my class this spring - the still life series and the group illustration shots in particular. Just looking at them now makes me tired, and a little depressed when it comes to the still life stuff, because it's so not what I envisioned and planned for. I really need more practice with it, and it's actually quite fun. The people shoots...eh, not so much. I'm a little scared to take the summer off from photo classes - I'm afraid I'll forget what I know - but I need a break. I need to stop putting all of my money into paper and film for a bit...although I don't necessarily want to. I just found out that I will have access to the darkroom, though, if I want it - that makes me happy. And I'm also kicking around the idea for an independent study for the fall with my fall semester professor. I want to do something photojournalistic, because I'll never get to take that class during the day. So much to do...meanwhile, I'm available for special occasions. : ) 
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