Sometimes I'm just in love with the world.
It was the day before my birthday and I had finished a good morning of writing, then driven a short stretch of the gorgeous Pacific coastline where I, with smug appreciation, live. I was in a supermarket where the Muzak machine was playing Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World," a song that always distributes virtual champagne bubbles through my system. I was softly singing along and happened to look up when another woman met my eyes. She also was singing along. We smiled at each other, two strangers enjoying an unexpected harmony. I felt such love of life and such a sense of well-being.
Two weeks later I am plagued by ceaseless replays of the inescapable images of September 11. The nightmares don't go away. My internal terrorist forces me to experience what it must have been like in the air, in the buildings, and what it must be like to flee Kabul for a refugee camp in order to escape American wrath.
On the Friday night of the worldwide candlelight vigil our neighborhood gathered up at the corner of our dirt roads. Nine of us alone together on this planet, the Pacific pounding a few blocks away, we shivered in the twilight, relighting one another's candles when the breeze blew them out. The two old guys muttered, "Something has to be done." Their wives skittered back and forth from nervous chitchat to somber acknowledgment of why we were together. The young progressive couple was so pleased we were meeting that they later brought over a big fat zucchini from their garden. We three neighborhood dykes, veterans of the peace movement, were just as glad as the others for the small comfort of our get together.
At first I'd gone into oppression mode. These religious zealots who saw America as world headquarters for liberated women, queers and others who did not adhere to their patriarchal rules had killed people like me. I wanted to stand up to them even if it took my ineffectual bare fists. My friend the innkeeper woke me up. "This isn't about religion," she reminded me, "this is about the 100,000 Iraqis we killed in the Gulf War."
All week the internet has been full of petitions to the president for restraint, for peace. Virtual voices have been raised to protest by petition the philosophy of an eye for an eye for an eye ad infinitum. I will take my comfort where I can, even in the electronic community and the media. I have been reading each brief painful obituary in the newspaper as a way of mourning the victims and their unbearable deaths. One to date has been very openly, very sadly, about a lesbian and another about a gay man.
The owners of our local natural food store have issued an invitation to gather with them. "People need ways to move beyond the confusion and fear," the organizers wrote, " we all deserve reassurance that hope is not lost and that peace is a possibility." Is this how the Israelis, the Irish, the Palestinians and other people who have been under attack for their whole lives cope? I am privileged to be an American lesbian able to seek such reassurance in safety. But to what ends will I go to maintain my constant comfort while the Afghani people live in constant misery? I am such a naive baby boomer that I wonder, after our fathers won the war to end all wars, after my generation stopped the Vietnam war, after all these decades of meaning well and recycling diligently, how this could happen to us.
I am afraid we will hurt more people. I am afraid we will ignore the danger and do nothing in hopes it will go away. I cancelled my travel planes to and from Logan Airport in Boston, not knowing if it will ever be safe to visit my New England family again. I want to visit, I want to hide. I want peace, I want to do whatever it takes to prevent another attack. I am so confused. Or perhaps the truth is that I'd rather stay confused. I don't want to give up a comfortable life and die for my convictions.
So I am drawn to loving gatherings and humor and words that help me stay calm. A friend posted this and I have taped it to my bathroom mirror because it is the best advice I've gotten: "Reform Jewish philosophy is pretty much: 'why do horrible things happen? Who the hell knows? We are all scared and upset so we'll all sit together and meditate and then have a snack.' It's working for me as well as anything."
Maybe we'll even sing "It's A Wonderful World" again someday.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2001
