Fandango

I would like to believe that I'm an optimist. But sometimes my mind is a picturehouse of doom. And I wonder if this is my own natural inclination or something else. (Sure, this doesn't seem like the sort of thing to write after a month long hiatus from blogarhythm. Walk with me.)

I went and watched the fireworks on the East River which were fabulous by the way. Macy's knows how to spend a kajillion bucks. And I went to see this lightshow with my compadres from high school, Zach and Chris. And the whole hour prior to the explodaria, we spoke about the easy targets we were for terrorism.

As the police helicopters buzzed the crowd and the barges full of rockets lined up in the harbor, as the harbor cruises packed with people jockeyed for the best position, as the crowd stood to watch a huge American symbol in New York City -- the symbol of America itself, we jabbered about how easily we could get a spray of bullets or rocket propelled grenade into our midst.

Now, wait a minute. I hate the War on Terror. I think it causes way more problems than it solves. But President Bush would say this is exactly what he's fighting. These types of thoughts in my head. The fear and the possibility of these things. Do I start to agree with his "War President" paranoia? His cowboy idealisms? Do I fear for my life and demand my tax dollars buy bullets to stop those who would put bullets in me?

No. And I wish I had remembered this word from my sociology class but I will explain the basic concept and maybe someone who reads this can tell me what it is. I think also a groovy art professor by the name of Griffin mentioned this same idea in one of his art history lectures. What I think I'm experiencing is a "splintering."

Its when a tragic event happens, especially something as big as a World War or the 9/11 attack and the person's consciousness departs from some safe bubble of sociological identity or safety. This happened to Americans after World War I and was one of the reasons we didn't enter World War II right away. We weren't mentally ready to grasp the horrors. We were such a hick nation before then. We matured and went to WW II with a much larger perspective. But immediately after the war, we retreated. Thus the super suburbanites of the 50's and 60's and the Red Scare.

I don't feel safe I guess. Or my mortality suddenly comes to occur to me. Maybe how short a time I have to gouge this earth deep enough people will know I was here. So many little things could take me before my dreams/ambitions are fully realized. So much of my writing deals with tragic premature death. I never questioned it until recently.

When the tsunami hit Malaysia and when Katrina hit I was shocked and upset. Valerie said she wasn't completely surprised but she felt that way about 9/11. I told her I expect people to be awful to each other. I didn't expect the earth to turn on us like that. So I don' t think it was 9/11. I think this splintering happened a while ago. I'm trying to discover when. That's where my writing is taking me right now.(Oh, the title and partial inspiration for this post comes from that Kevin Costner movie Fandango and the scene where they shoot roman candles in the graveyard. They realize that the screaming and the shooting fire reminds them that they've been drafted to Vietnam.)