The soundtrack for the moment is The church: Destination. The text is DMZ by Brian Wood. The events are Civil War Heroes, Terrorism, and The Berlin Wall: 25 Years Later.
The Soundtrack: The Church Starfish, 1988, Track 1. Destination:
Our instruments have no way of measuring this feeling
Can never cut below the floor, or penetrate the ceiling.
In the space between our houses, some bones have been discovered,
But our procession lurches on, as if we had recovered.
Draconian winter unforetold.
One solar day, suddenly you're old.
Your little envelope just makes me cold,
Makes destination start to unfold.
Our documents are useless, or forged beyond believing.
Page forty-seven is unsigned, I need it by this evening.
In the space between our cities, a storm is slowly forming.
Something eating up our days, I feel it every morning.
Destination, destination.
It's not a religion, it's just a technique.
It's just a way of making you speak.
Distance and speed have left us too weak,
And destination looks kind of bleak.
Our elements are burned out, our beasts have been mistreated.
I tell you it's the only way we'll get this road completed.
In the space between our bodies, the air has grown small fingers.
Just one caress, you're powerless, like all those clapped-out swingers.
Destination, destination.
Can never cut below the floor, or penetrate the ceiling.
In the space between our houses, some bones have been discovered,
But our procession lurches on, as if we had recovered.
Draconian winter unforetold.
One solar day, suddenly you're old.
Your little envelope just makes me cold,
Makes destination start to unfold.
Our documents are useless, or forged beyond believing.
Page forty-seven is unsigned, I need it by this evening.
In the space between our cities, a storm is slowly forming.
Something eating up our days, I feel it every morning.
Destination, destination.
It's not a religion, it's just a technique.
It's just a way of making you speak.
Distance and speed have left us too weak,
And destination looks kind of bleak.
Our elements are burned out, our beasts have been mistreated.
I tell you it's the only way we'll get this road completed.
In the space between our bodies, the air has grown small fingers.
Just one caress, you're powerless, like all those clapped-out swingers.
Destination, destination.
The Text: I am just finishing DMZ by Brian Wood. I have only a few issues left to go. What started as a way to pass the time has developed into a pretty thought-provoking story told through a journalistic lens and moved with often very stimulating art by Riccardo Burchielli and many guest artists.
DMZ is an American comic book series written by Brian Wood, with artwork by Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. The series is set in the near future, where a second American civil war has turned the island of Manhattan into a demilitarized zone (DMZ), caught between forces of the United States of America and secessionist Free States of America. (Wikipedia).
In his article The Civil War Has Begun. It’s on Park Avenue George Gene Gustines of the New York Times offers a brief summary of the Novel (which finishes in about 75 issues over ten years of release).
"At the center of DMZ, which is published by Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics, is Matt Roth, who begins the series as an ill-informed, unmotivated, 20-something photo intern for the Liberty News television network. He accompanies an award-winning journalist into Manhattan, but their helicopter is shot down near the Bowery and Delancey Streets, and Matt is stranded. That’s when he begins to learn that the reports about Manhattan — only insurgents remain, rats and pigeons are the main food source — are propaganda. Matt decides to stay and document the struggle for survival among the remaining residents, the diehards who will not leave and the unlucky who could not cross the bridges before they were sealed." (www.nytimes.com)
As the story develops—what started as an implausible, and at times silly, over-drama of NYC laying at the center of a civil war—the reality of possible division in any nation is drawn ever more realistically, focusing on the the people who are swept by the tides of events that seem out of their control. I do not worry about our civil war, but am saddened by the divisions that lie around the globe and wish instead to look to the healers, the patchers, the middle-ground finders—the leaders who are often rejected in the moment by passionately angry opposing sides and discovered by the masses only when the fatigue of conflict overtakes them.
Civil War Heroes: Congress recently approved awarding a Medal of Honor 151 years after the fact. Read the story here at BBC and NYT. The quote that I took away from the story is from President Obama:
"This medal is a reminder that no matter how long it takes, it is never too late to do the right thing."I am not sure I agree that it is never too late to do the right thing, but I know that even if we are late we need to do the right thing. Healing takes time. We are still healing our civil war. I am not sure how much posthumous medals aid in that process, but the conversations of why we fought and how we heal are important to what we are as a nation. Relationships take work to remain healthy. Ours is an experimental relationship in the form of a representative democracy. It can be messy and contentious. It can be madding and rife with bitter pills of compromise and even corruption. But we struggle on to adapt a system to meet our needs. As long as we have our principles and heroes, and questioners and readers, participants and dreamers, I think we will continue to be all right. It just takes time to heal when we botch it all up.
Terrorism: The nature of terrorism is to create change though fear. We fear what we cannot see or understand. When violence comes from un-uniformed attackers and is directed at people who do not train to be ready for attack, we feel violated. And it is a violation. While all war is violation, terrorism seems to be several notches higher on the scale to me. I wonder if civil war feels similar. We study brother fighting brother, people who are often divided by fewer differences than the majority of the global conflicts we study. Does violence done to "the other" who is so similar to us harder than violence to the "the other" from afar? Do we hurt those closest to us worse than those who are distance because we are so much more reticent to engage our own kind? Or do we jump in so much faster when we can easily separate ourselves from "the other". A friend of mine teaches an enduring understanding: "What we can separate we can violate." The logical and ethical conclusion is to follow up with the lessons on how we mend, heal, and join, to prohibit the separation that so often precedes the violation.
And it can be done...
The Berlin Wall 25 Years Later: I was born in Baltimore. My grandfather was born in Germany. Some of my people are from parts of the world that I used to call East Germany. I was told at one point when I was in early high school that I would never really have the chance to visit where my ancestors came from. I felt a pretty deep sadness about this and took to heart stories I heard about the walls of Germany and the camps of WWII, of people signaling each other across the divides. An so I was glued to the TV in 1989 when I watched video clip after video clip of German kids clamoring on a wall that was the most fortified structure I knew as a kid. There were dog runs and roll wire fences, underground listening points and whitewashed walls, guard towers and spot lights, razor wire and mines. And these Germans were tearing it apart with their bare hands, sledgehammers, other parts of the wall. I asked my father "We're watching history, aren't we?" He replied, "Yes, we are." They had become strangers, these Germans of East and West, but they have also been working on healing for 25 years now. The lines have blurred considerably. My students do not know of the sadness I had of a country divided. Such healing in one generation! It gives me a little hope...
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