In My Country

I saw a great movie this weekend called, "In My Country." Let's just say that we are lucky to live where we do. And let us just further say that being white is a privelege that can't be taken away, and can't be given back. Go ahead and whine. Self denigration, loud protestation and empathy don't change a thing.

I'll say the word, but resist your inner file manager, the one that says, "Ah, this goes right here" in the Shit That Doesn't Affect Me folder. Already your eyes are glazing over, because the phase triggered an unconscious brain mine, your heart rate accelerated and your hand is absently twitching the mouse towards the Next Blog button. It's a choice really, how we live our lives. We all know that bad stuff happens, and some of us are really put out by it. Hell, we might even get indignant and pretend to really care, especially when rightly accused of apathy. But next week I'll have totally forgotten about it, swimming in the Soma of my own petty problems, and my life will continue unabated on it's present course.

What's the word?

Later. I have more to say.

I admire the kind of person who gets up one day, tired of all the bullshit, tired of hearing people complain about the state of the world, tired of talking about the injustice of it all, and takes action.

Do you ever wonder what it must be like to be a field reporter? Someone who doesn't hear it first on the news; rather someone who gets a call at three in the morning. Get your ass to Oklahoma City. Someone who walks through the rubble of an explosion and finds a shoe that fits in his white-knuckled fist with a tiny, gushing foot still in it? Someone who witnesses an execution with the family of the condemned man's victim and his sobbing mother, tendrils of smoke snaking from underneath a metal kippah, the smell of burnt meat wafting and pervasive, like a roasted pig in a pit. Someone who walks through a refugee camp after eating a hot breakfast, and sees the body of an emaciated child, skin pulled impossibly taut over a rib cage like a vacuum sealed freezer bag, with a fly casually cleaning its wings atop a sightless open eyeball. Someone who has consoled and transcribed the events of countless victims and survivors of violent crimes.

I do. But I live right here, in my little office that overlooks my slice of the Shire while the world turns on its hostile axis. I wish sometimes that I would have joined the service, or traveled abroad. I feel fortunate to have shoveled shit, to have worked in the freezing cold, to have rubbed two pennies together and wished them into silver dollars, to have loved and lost, to have tried so many times, to have been told I couldn't do it, to have risen above the caste I was born to.

Maybe if we all had to see the dark side of life, to squirm from its oppressive grip, we would have some respect, for each other and for the lives of people who never even had a ticket in the geographic lottery. Maybe we would have more of a stake in the future.

If I could do it all over, I would live a different life. I'm happy, but feeling a little guilty, like I'm living on the backs of slaves. I'm not rich by my country's standards, but on a world scale I'm living in Graceland. Make that Disneyland.

But like I said, I'll get over it. A movie like In My Country is like a cup of Peets: jolting, but the buzz eventually wears off.

The word? Oh yeah.

Apartheid.