Death is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Word just came: I’m heading to New Orleans on Monday. I was trying to get down there but the logistics just didn’t click until now. I’ll be reporting from New Orleans, nearby Covington, where Camp Casey folks have a relief station set up, and anywhere else I can get to.
A man I interned with at UPI – a New Orleans native – is there. He told me he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life scattered by Hurricane Katrina. Essential gear to bring: a tall pair of rubber boots and clothes I never want to wear again. That’s it. The media are pulling out, on to the next crisis. It’s a good time to fill in the gaps they’ll leave behind, although the market for Katrina stories is rapidly cooling. So it goes. The nature of the beast. But Katrina is far from over.
I visited Abed today. His health got even worse so he’s in the hospital now. I hope they can fix him. He is still ready to die but he found out about an experimental treatment that his idiotic doctors failed to tell him about. So, he’s hopeful.
The sick thing is that his invitation to mortality made me feel like my head got turned around in the right direction. Little distractions popped like the soap bubbles that children blow. That’s how 9/11 and Katrina felt, and how the war in Iraq probably feels to some people.
Chris Hedges wrote a book called “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.” Well, death is also a force that gives us meaning. Abed gave me a glimpse at a force more powerful than any other. Then he made me stare at it without romantic illusions. Abed hadn’t cowered and he didn’t let me either.
I think war is wrapped in romantic illusions for many because they don’t want to or have to face death head-on. Those who die, or rather their deaths, are shrouded in our national mythology of sacrifice and patriotism. I’ve heard it was like that in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Germany and America (in WWII), and just about every other nation that rallied its people to fight for their country – and accept the death of those who died doing it. With few exceptions, they were really fighting for leaders who clung, with fat greedy paws, to power. When they recognize that truth (as in Vietnam or Serbia in 2000), they stop fighting.
Hedges was also right when he wrote that war gives meaning to lives of quiet desperation. The trip to New Orleans felt like that. Between Abed and Katrina, my life sure felt like it had meaning. I would be one of the people who participated in life, actually took a front-ring seat to history. I would see the destruction, smell the death, hear the desperation. Realizing my thoughts were getting warped into a war hero delusion, I took a step back to examine my motives. The reporting is supposed to be about working as an “early warning system,” as Amartya Sen put it. Not feeding myself on others’ misery.
It’s not like I want to be a tourist, visiting hell on earth just to see what it’s like. I lived through enough as a kid to get a taste. To be honest, it’s like another author wrote: “Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” I wouldn’t use those adjectives in my case, but the struggle is about right.
A man I interned with at UPI – a New Orleans native – is there. He told me he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life scattered by Hurricane Katrina. Essential gear to bring: a tall pair of rubber boots and clothes I never want to wear again. That’s it. The media are pulling out, on to the next crisis. It’s a good time to fill in the gaps they’ll leave behind, although the market for Katrina stories is rapidly cooling. So it goes. The nature of the beast. But Katrina is far from over.
I visited Abed today. His health got even worse so he’s in the hospital now. I hope they can fix him. He is still ready to die but he found out about an experimental treatment that his idiotic doctors failed to tell him about. So, he’s hopeful.
The sick thing is that his invitation to mortality made me feel like my head got turned around in the right direction. Little distractions popped like the soap bubbles that children blow. That’s how 9/11 and Katrina felt, and how the war in Iraq probably feels to some people.
Chris Hedges wrote a book called “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.” Well, death is also a force that gives us meaning. Abed gave me a glimpse at a force more powerful than any other. Then he made me stare at it without romantic illusions. Abed hadn’t cowered and he didn’t let me either.
I think war is wrapped in romantic illusions for many because they don’t want to or have to face death head-on. Those who die, or rather their deaths, are shrouded in our national mythology of sacrifice and patriotism. I’ve heard it was like that in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Germany and America (in WWII), and just about every other nation that rallied its people to fight for their country – and accept the death of those who died doing it. With few exceptions, they were really fighting for leaders who clung, with fat greedy paws, to power. When they recognize that truth (as in Vietnam or Serbia in 2000), they stop fighting.
Hedges was also right when he wrote that war gives meaning to lives of quiet desperation. The trip to New Orleans felt like that. Between Abed and Katrina, my life sure felt like it had meaning. I would be one of the people who participated in life, actually took a front-ring seat to history. I would see the destruction, smell the death, hear the desperation. Realizing my thoughts were getting warped into a war hero delusion, I took a step back to examine my motives. The reporting is supposed to be about working as an “early warning system,” as Amartya Sen put it. Not feeding myself on others’ misery.
It’s not like I want to be a tourist, visiting hell on earth just to see what it’s like. I lived through enough as a kid to get a taste. To be honest, it’s like another author wrote: “Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” I wouldn’t use those adjectives in my case, but the struggle is about right.
posted by A.W. Woodall at 9:52 PM
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