Why Am I So Upset?
What do I say when asked why am I so upset by this war? I try to write it but the words never suffice...Maybe it takes a lifetime of silence followed by one of wailing and yet another of word after word to express my insides at this time.
It's more than war; it's the inevitability of this war as thousands upon thousands of missiles tear apart a country and it's people (and we all knew this would happen eventually.) I see this not as a campaign for "iraqi freedom" but as the political colonization of a land and her people, controlling their resources and their self-determination as the government of the U.S. invades to set up yet another puppet "democracy" to funnel out political for financial support, to create another partner in the crime. And here I exist feeling helpless in this history which happens yet again and again...
My thoughts are fractured and often possessed by an urgency that I can't hide in any sort of insulation; I can't live in this material reality and avoid the fact that there is a war right now, that this is how it works. This is a constant reminder of a history of brutal colonization in the physical, the mental, and the political definitions of the concept. The connections weigh heavy on my mind, and I have visions of the immediate and far futures that are nightmarish as I imagine of how the history of colonization and globalization may be written generations from now. Right now I wonder what direction will this take if the resistance is solidly wore down, if not by economic, political and mental pressure, then by millions of pounds of bombs? How much can we take, can this earth take? Please note: there are a million more points to address in this line of questioning.
I am consumed with the now and the past, connected by desperation screamed into an air turned heavy with burning buildings and bodies, the massacres for the sake of some sick kind of freedom, the realization of a people when they/we see the death of their/our rights to control their/our land, to own their/our resources as even the freedom to exist starts to fade. How did it and how does it feel to see a nation murdered at that initial point, while the first bloody battles for dominance turn a homeland into a battlefield? When indigenous existence is criminal in one's own home, in defense of one's life against an invading force? I only know how it feels generations later, reading that history, seeing the images, imagining the rest, viewing the present as too connected, as continuation.
It makes me think of cities burned so that they could be forgotten, history destroyed as codices were charred and buried, women raped and men slaughtered, holy statues shattered so that the spirits of a population could die as well. The colonizers destroy everything and offer it back to us, only it is their version and they expect us to take it. And because we have nothing left anymore, we do.
Perhaps my sense of urgency is from the fact that this has happened before and it will happen again but maybe if I am actively oppositional, if I record my thoughts and connect to the past, I can somehow avenge my own ancestors and this existence inextricably rooted in the conquest of nations, murder, colonization and resistance. It's that I see images of dead brown bodies and I also see the correlations to a history of conquest in all it's forms, colored black and white in history books when it should bleed from the pages. Lands murdered and controlled by well executed plans and metal constructed to kill and this will happen again and again and again and again as it's accepted as some sick normality as the rest of us fight those battles affecting our immediate survival within a system of domination. This history is the still in it's beginning and this shit will not end so neither will my being upset, nor my attempts to end this destruction and domination, nor my constructing modes of survival and creation outside of the dominant methods, and never will cease my small words filling up a piece of a huge sky.
It's more than war; it's the inevitability of this war as thousands upon thousands of missiles tear apart a country and it's people (and we all knew this would happen eventually.) I see this not as a campaign for "iraqi freedom" but as the political colonization of a land and her people, controlling their resources and their self-determination as the government of the U.S. invades to set up yet another puppet "democracy" to funnel out political for financial support, to create another partner in the crime. And here I exist feeling helpless in this history which happens yet again and again...
My thoughts are fractured and often possessed by an urgency that I can't hide in any sort of insulation; I can't live in this material reality and avoid the fact that there is a war right now, that this is how it works. This is a constant reminder of a history of brutal colonization in the physical, the mental, and the political definitions of the concept. The connections weigh heavy on my mind, and I have visions of the immediate and far futures that are nightmarish as I imagine of how the history of colonization and globalization may be written generations from now. Right now I wonder what direction will this take if the resistance is solidly wore down, if not by economic, political and mental pressure, then by millions of pounds of bombs? How much can we take, can this earth take? Please note: there are a million more points to address in this line of questioning.
I am consumed with the now and the past, connected by desperation screamed into an air turned heavy with burning buildings and bodies, the massacres for the sake of some sick kind of freedom, the realization of a people when they/we see the death of their/our rights to control their/our land, to own their/our resources as even the freedom to exist starts to fade. How did it and how does it feel to see a nation murdered at that initial point, while the first bloody battles for dominance turn a homeland into a battlefield? When indigenous existence is criminal in one's own home, in defense of one's life against an invading force? I only know how it feels generations later, reading that history, seeing the images, imagining the rest, viewing the present as too connected, as continuation.
It makes me think of cities burned so that they could be forgotten, history destroyed as codices were charred and buried, women raped and men slaughtered, holy statues shattered so that the spirits of a population could die as well. The colonizers destroy everything and offer it back to us, only it is their version and they expect us to take it. And because we have nothing left anymore, we do.
Perhaps my sense of urgency is from the fact that this has happened before and it will happen again but maybe if I am actively oppositional, if I record my thoughts and connect to the past, I can somehow avenge my own ancestors and this existence inextricably rooted in the conquest of nations, murder, colonization and resistance. It's that I see images of dead brown bodies and I also see the correlations to a history of conquest in all it's forms, colored black and white in history books when it should bleed from the pages. Lands murdered and controlled by well executed plans and metal constructed to kill and this will happen again and again and again and again as it's accepted as some sick normality as the rest of us fight those battles affecting our immediate survival within a system of domination. This history is the still in it's beginning and this shit will not end so neither will my being upset, nor my attempts to end this destruction and domination, nor my constructing modes of survival and creation outside of the dominant methods, and never will cease my small words filling up a piece of a huge sky.
permalink posted on 3/11/2003 04:34:00 AM
