Quaking in One Form or Another
On the BART platform today, I was knee deep in Rousseau again, trying to consider what's changed in the mind of the citizen since the eighteenth century when it comes to our expectations regarding tax structure. On my left, a strung out bum taking advantage of Spare the Air day, taking a free trip to another neighborhood. On my right, a woman whose face looked like a sudden loss of elasticity at turned it suddenly natural looking, maybe breaking free of a half dozen face lifts, finally at rest.
The thought of elasticity must have traveled to the earth's mantle, picked up by some half-liquid, psychic planetary consciousness. The platform shook a little. Soundlessly, but with a keen lateral vibration. We all looked up and at each other, afraid to venture a guess. It was pint-sized, hardly worthy of notice. A hiccough in the crust. Gas escaping, nothing more. But we all felt it. She said it was hurricane season somewhere else, and we should be worried about earthquakes here. I put the only rhetorical bandage I had onto the fresh psychological wound.
A few little ones are always better than one big one.
Later, I stumbled on this. (Thanks BoingBoing.) The End Times? You're serious? Another scuffle in the Holy Land and you think it's a Jerry Jenkins book all of a sudden? Are we thinking about how often this has happened? Did Jesus offer mass succor during the six days war? You may as well think that Spielberg directing Munich was a sign of the Apocalypse. Here come the four horsemen, buckle up and move to Idaho, kids, the ground's shaking, the streets are flooding and the senate hangs in the balance this year.
I admit I'm the wrong person to ask if you're looking for any kind of reassurance in the spirituality field. I know that these are fringe lunatics, and not an accurate representation of the Christian majority in my country, but still, the fact that anyone is glad that there's a war on makes me cold and angry. I can't accurately put into words the kind of fury I feel at these sentiments. A militarily, technologically superior state with mandatory military service for all adults is hunting down and killing members of a fringe, extremist group over the capture of two soldiers.
Mind you, they didn't kill those soldiers. (They may have since, I've not seen any information on that subject.) Bear in mind also, those weren't civilians or innocents, they were soldiers with an understanding that they were in harm's way. Israel has essentially declared war on all tangent nations by invading and holding land for “defensive purposes.” I won't speak to who is right or wrong on that count—afraid as I am that my bias shows through—but one has to realize that the attack by Hezballah was par for the course.
Earthquakes, then. A few small ones is always better than one big one. I really do mean it when I call that a “rhetorical bandage.” It's little better than sticking an adhesive medical strip to the arm of an uninjured by scared child. A few small tremors can signal the sudden release of a major event. They can also be aftershocks. For a long time now, I've been thinking that these sorts of events—a bombing here, a hijacked bus there—were just two pusillanimous peoples letting off steam, fully aware that the rest of the world wouldn't sit idly by as they quickly escalated against one another.
Or maybe they were tiny scratches. Mosquito bites at a gangrenous wound, building up slowly until the arm finally falls off. This could be the arm. Even the secular crazies are screaming about this. World War Three! World War Three, they cry. We organize emergency meetings of the highest powers in the world to decide what to do next. I hate throwing around clichés like “powder keg” and “fox in the henhouse,” (Mostly because I prefer phrases like “George W. Bush alone in North Beach,” or “Actual girl on a World of Warcraft Server”) but I can't help but think that the world never stops being one Archduke Ferdinand away from seven to ten years of trenches, tanks and racist, Disney-approved propaganda.
Do we worry, then? Me and all you other draft-worthy young men? Do we hope that, yes, Jesus is calling us home and it's time to repent and open our hearts to the man with the holes in his wrists? Or will this all blow over? The earth's mantle is a tricky beast. Thermodynamics on a scale most people's arithmetical expertise can't quite describe. Claustrophobia doesn't begin to describe what it must be like for a stone, under so much pressure it's melted, spending twenty million years rising to the surface of the earth again. Imagine the orgasmic release of the volcano, or the shuddering, sulfurous fart of a fault line moving. Try to feel what the Israeli soldier feels, twenty million tons of anger and jealously grinding down on him from every side. The constant upward motion of training and learning and hereditary hatred, being tooled into a killing machine. Now just let that thin thread of civility and propriety be washed aside for a second by some succession of factors...
Volcanic is a very small word that only shines light on the inability of language to express some concepts. Nuclear war is a better term, but so much less metaphorical that I prefer to imagine Oakland crumbling around me than to let my thoughts wander toward Mecca. The human is not a violent creature by nature. He is, however, wired for self defense. Stressful situations make her likely to lash out. The tiny boxes we put ourselves in for the good of one another are fraying more than nerves. They're fraying the very social compact we agree to so that we can all have the boxes. Pluralism is showing its dark side in the Middle East, and we know that there is a dark side to it here. How far, how fast and how darkly can this shattered peace spread?
Like a wildfire? Like all the news that's fit to upload? Or like the earth itself shrugging us off its core? I leave you with that, and I leave you with hope.
The thought of elasticity must have traveled to the earth's mantle, picked up by some half-liquid, psychic planetary consciousness. The platform shook a little. Soundlessly, but with a keen lateral vibration. We all looked up and at each other, afraid to venture a guess. It was pint-sized, hardly worthy of notice. A hiccough in the crust. Gas escaping, nothing more. But we all felt it. She said it was hurricane season somewhere else, and we should be worried about earthquakes here. I put the only rhetorical bandage I had onto the fresh psychological wound.
A few little ones are always better than one big one.
Later, I stumbled on this. (Thanks BoingBoing.) The End Times? You're serious? Another scuffle in the Holy Land and you think it's a Jerry Jenkins book all of a sudden? Are we thinking about how often this has happened? Did Jesus offer mass succor during the six days war? You may as well think that Spielberg directing Munich was a sign of the Apocalypse. Here come the four horsemen, buckle up and move to Idaho, kids, the ground's shaking, the streets are flooding and the senate hangs in the balance this year.
I admit I'm the wrong person to ask if you're looking for any kind of reassurance in the spirituality field. I know that these are fringe lunatics, and not an accurate representation of the Christian majority in my country, but still, the fact that anyone is glad that there's a war on makes me cold and angry. I can't accurately put into words the kind of fury I feel at these sentiments. A militarily, technologically superior state with mandatory military service for all adults is hunting down and killing members of a fringe, extremist group over the capture of two soldiers.
Mind you, they didn't kill those soldiers. (They may have since, I've not seen any information on that subject.) Bear in mind also, those weren't civilians or innocents, they were soldiers with an understanding that they were in harm's way. Israel has essentially declared war on all tangent nations by invading and holding land for “defensive purposes.” I won't speak to who is right or wrong on that count—afraid as I am that my bias shows through—but one has to realize that the attack by Hezballah was par for the course.
Earthquakes, then. A few small ones is always better than one big one. I really do mean it when I call that a “rhetorical bandage.” It's little better than sticking an adhesive medical strip to the arm of an uninjured by scared child. A few small tremors can signal the sudden release of a major event. They can also be aftershocks. For a long time now, I've been thinking that these sorts of events—a bombing here, a hijacked bus there—were just two pusillanimous peoples letting off steam, fully aware that the rest of the world wouldn't sit idly by as they quickly escalated against one another.
Or maybe they were tiny scratches. Mosquito bites at a gangrenous wound, building up slowly until the arm finally falls off. This could be the arm. Even the secular crazies are screaming about this. World War Three! World War Three, they cry. We organize emergency meetings of the highest powers in the world to decide what to do next. I hate throwing around clichés like “powder keg” and “fox in the henhouse,” (Mostly because I prefer phrases like “George W. Bush alone in North Beach,” or “Actual girl on a World of Warcraft Server”) but I can't help but think that the world never stops being one Archduke Ferdinand away from seven to ten years of trenches, tanks and racist, Disney-approved propaganda.
Do we worry, then? Me and all you other draft-worthy young men? Do we hope that, yes, Jesus is calling us home and it's time to repent and open our hearts to the man with the holes in his wrists? Or will this all blow over? The earth's mantle is a tricky beast. Thermodynamics on a scale most people's arithmetical expertise can't quite describe. Claustrophobia doesn't begin to describe what it must be like for a stone, under so much pressure it's melted, spending twenty million years rising to the surface of the earth again. Imagine the orgasmic release of the volcano, or the shuddering, sulfurous fart of a fault line moving. Try to feel what the Israeli soldier feels, twenty million tons of anger and jealously grinding down on him from every side. The constant upward motion of training and learning and hereditary hatred, being tooled into a killing machine. Now just let that thin thread of civility and propriety be washed aside for a second by some succession of factors...
Volcanic is a very small word that only shines light on the inability of language to express some concepts. Nuclear war is a better term, but so much less metaphorical that I prefer to imagine Oakland crumbling around me than to let my thoughts wander toward Mecca. The human is not a violent creature by nature. He is, however, wired for self defense. Stressful situations make her likely to lash out. The tiny boxes we put ourselves in for the good of one another are fraying more than nerves. They're fraying the very social compact we agree to so that we can all have the boxes. Pluralism is showing its dark side in the Middle East, and we know that there is a dark side to it here. How far, how fast and how darkly can this shattered peace spread?
Like a wildfire? Like all the news that's fit to upload? Or like the earth itself shrugging us off its core? I leave you with that, and I leave you with hope.
posted by Maximillian @ 11:14 PM
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