peace march

a week ago, ed, aiyana and i went to a local peace rally. it was a small thing, 50 people or less marching together for 10 blocks. we stopped in a park, listened to a speech, and then marched back. it felt good to be part of something like this again. in he past, we used to go to big peace rallies in DC in NYC, but it's been much harder with the kids, so now we try to go to small, local ones. i always like the combined energy of the people who get together at these things. it's exciting, i like feeling like i'm part of something larger than my immediate, mundane concerns. but one thing bothered me at this last rally.

on our walk back from the speech, i noticed a young woman walking in front of me with a large poster mounted high on a stick. the poster depicted a mother, dressed in black clothes, wearing black head-dress, and carrying, in her arms, the limp body of a small child. the child, her child, was naked and dead. blood was trickling from the side of his body. as soon as my eyes landed on this picture, i had the knee-jerk reaction which i always get when i see such things. i got choked up, my stomach felt like it wanted to turn inside out, and my eyes started filling with tears. i didn't say anything, just kept walking and looking at the poster. i could not take my eyes off it, and i suddenly felt terribly sad and lonely. the excitement of the gathering, the feeling of a good cause, all of that, gone. although the poster seemed to fit in with the theme of the march, somehow, i felt unease. something felt wrong, but i couldn't put words to it.

finally, i just turned to ed, who was pushing aiyana's stroller, unaware of what i was feeling. i pointed to the poster and said to him, "i hope that when they made that, they did it with a lot of respect". it was a weird thing to say, in a way, and i had to elaborate it for myself and for ed's sake. i think that what i wanted to say is that i hope they didn't just use that picture lightly. it was such a powerful image, and it should not be thrown around lightly. people who've lost children are suffering greatly, and i feel that their pain should not be used for any purpose without the utmost respect. i'm not conveying what i felt really well, but maybe you get the idea...

i actually had he same feeling when i walked in a cafe today, and saw a book on display. it was about a boy soldier, from sierra leone, about the terrible things he had been through. his own account of war, how he was drawn into it and how he eventually escaped it. anyway, as soon as i saw the book, i knew it was powerful. yet, i had that feeling again, something sour coming up inside me. i felt, here's this crazy, heart-wrenching story being used as entertainment for people sipping coffee in their spare time. it's such a fuzzy issue, bc i do think that these stories need to be told, we all need to know them and ache for them and do our best to make things easier, lighter, etc. yet, a part of me feels like these stories are being used as entertainment, which means that some people's pain are used for other's "fun".

i don't really see any solution to this. all i can think of is that when i read or come accross stories / images like these, i do want to take them seriously, i want to let them come in and touch me. maybe what i'm trying to say is that i don't want to get used to them, don't want to get callused, don't want my heart to shut, so that one person's story becames just one more sad story i've read somewhere, while sipping coffee.

peace