A Small Town

like I grew up in. I could ride my bike down the middle of Main Street, which was named Main Street, and be safe. My first view of a gun, was a pistol kept by my Grandpa. He had acquired it during WW II, and had his Gerand issued to him from the same war. The only time I ever saw either of them, was the time he killed a rattlesnake down by the pond where my 7 year old brother and I were fishing.

I think Samuel L. Jackson has the Newtown tragedy right, when he said that he was raised in the South, with guns, and had never seen anyone shot. He said it is not about guns, but about the shooters not knowing or being taught, the value of human life. Although in general, I am against guns, I have to agree with him on this subject. My Papa taught us about guns, and how it felt to kill someone. He taught us it was never excusable to kill, except in war, and that it was a nasty business in war, too. Even pointing a gun had consequences, and we were never allowed to handle his guns.

And now it has come to small children, as if the loss at Columbine wasn't about small children...or as defenseless as a 6 year old.

And now it has come to the billions spent by the NRA, the National Rifle Association, and your neighbor with the assault rifle, and a way of thinking that agrees with almost casually killing someone, anyone that one can pick out as an 'enemy.' Or killing to make a statement, or killing because of an organic disease...all of these are being looked at as causes for the Newtown killings.

But I put it to you that we are a sick society. Where a great many veterans are homeless, or cross addicted, or dually addicted. Where people go hungry, and the tiny amount it takes to feed them is begrudged by one part of society to another. Where many of the elderly are untaken-care-of and the rights of women to own their own bodies is disputed. Which is a fair description of slavery, don't you think?

And sometimes, slaves go mad, actually insane, and kill. So, amid all the confusing debates about what is to be done, and it is a deeply intricate problem is my point, we are going to have to look at who we serve. Or, in this country I think, WHAT we serve.

I am sure that I was not born with an inherent right to a gun, or even money. I was born with an inherent need for survival, (shelter, food, water, air, clothes, and communication with others), liberty, and the 'pursuit of happiness,' or "Live and Let Live." 

And so we need to re-think a 400 year old way of living that, up to recent times, included the need for a gun to kill the food to make it to tomorrow. And we need to re-think an ancient way of living, that carries the view that some are more deserving than others: to life, food, shelter and love.

And so I sit, and read again my Jack Gilbert:

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.


From REFUSING HEAVEN (Knopf, 2005)