Okay I haven’t done one of these in a while.
Freewritten Thoughts on Haiti and U.S. “Aid” (unedited)
Two hundred thousand people have been killed in Haiti. That number is inconceivable to you. Not because you’re a bad person, or one incapable of empathy, but because its close to impossible for you to understand. You, who has never known what it is like to have everyone you have ever met either injured or killed. Everyone you love. Friendships you’ve made over your lifetime. Family members. Maybe even your Mother.
How does a human being carry on after that kind of trauma? Its hard for me to conceive of. Maybe I am too sheltered. I don’t think that’s the reason. I think that its because human beings are a social species and though we don’t always realize it, (or act like it), the only richness or wealth we have in the world – are the people around us. Day after day, everything we take for granted, everything we take as given, is all we have worth living for.
I was saying today that lately i find myself marveling at how quickly technology progresses, and how incredible it is that we never see the large steps from one radically advanced technology to the other, we see only the gradual procession of one better tweaked invention to the next.
I think it’s the same with human beings and our social relationships. We don’t realize day in and day out that we are so much further than we were when we started out with the people we love when we first met them. Day after day we sew their lives into our hearts, incorporate their personalities, their laughs, their worries, their tears, their wishes and dreams into our own, til’ we no longer distinguish what is us and what is them. Were we to lose all the relationships we’ve built day after day, grain by grain, word by word, all in one full sweep, as if one day the earth one day stood up straight and shook some dirt off its back. No matter how much I see or read about it, the insanity of our world never gets easier to swallow.
The people of Haiti deserve to be cradled. I wish I could gather Haiti in my arms and give her a warm bath in a beautiful peaceful country home. I wish I could put Haiti in fresh towels, and hug her, like a child in my arms. I want to hold Haiti as tightly as I can and tell her that there’s nothing else to be afraid of. Want to tell her to close her eyes and try not to think about the horrific things she’s seen, because its behind us now. I want to console her tired and grief gripped heart when aftershocks rip across the ground beneath us. I want to look her in the eyes and tell her I love her, that she’s safe. She’s safe because she’s loved. Love like I’ve always imagined it, the truest kind, feels like the sweetest most undeserved mercy. You don’t know why or how, you just know its there, by some miracle, against all odds, its there. That is the sweetest most exhilarating feeling in the world. I’ve only felt it a few times, and its like pure joy in my chest. You know the feeling, when someone just shows up for you, and you didn’t expect it, and you know you don’t really deserve it, you just need it, and like a miracle, its there.
Instead of the kind of love Haiti deserves, instead, soldiers are sent. This feels like a clean hard jab to the jaw.
Army personnel, 20,000 to be exact, were sent into Haiti to set up fortresses and fences to keep themselves safe from the poor “wid” people outside. These soldiers drive through the broken streets of neighborhoods where people fell in love, raised children and grew old, past people’s loved ones buried beneath rubble, past shivering children terrified of aftershocks, past people curled up, hungry, poor, and abandoned.
These soldiers don’t cradle Haiti, they assault her, they assault her while she’s still weak and bleeding. Instead of comfort and concern they shoved rifles in the frightened faces of starving people…shoved them up against one another and barked ‘one at a time!’ at people recovering from shock.
Also, I have to ask: what is a looter? The word is filthy to me. We live in a country filled with billionaires, people who’ve made their livliehood by robbing hard working people of their homes, their entire life savings. We live in a country governed by slimy theives who spend MILLIONS of dollars on campaigns while people STARVE. Is it looting when they make money off of war and gleefully make off with millions of dollars from death and destruction? Is it looting when they disregard every law and ordinance, is it looting when they are falsifying intelligence? Is it considered looting if you snatch people from their countries and torture them for months on end without so much as an explanation? What is being stolen? What is theft? What is valuable? Why do some people have the power to sign checks for millions of dollars in relief aid? Where did they get that money to begin with and how come they command those kinds of resources? Who is looted every single day so that a few people can lord over the lions share of the earth’s resources? Who is looted by people refusing to acknowledge the damage they are inflicting upon our planet?
Following the earthquake, many people slept in the cold rain, because they didn’t’ have anywhere to go. There were not enough tents for them all. This alone is enough to make me melt into my shoes. I really hope that the human threshold for emotional pain is similar to the threshold for physical pain, that after a while it just becomes numb.
Do I fetishize pain and suffering? No I don’t think I do. I think I work very hard to deprogram the mixed up values of this sick world. You know what I struggle with? I struggle to understand why it is that after I post a status ranting about Haiti, why I feel a bit embarrassed and wonder if I am being “overly dramatic”. Meanwhile, people I know are crying about Conan O’Brien having quit television. I understand that people do grow very strong emotional attachments to actors and actresses, or to certain shows or movies. I’m just saying. This is real life ya’ll – it hurts.
