the center cannot hold
I just read Kerry’s concession speech, and my face is sticky with tears. Sitting here in my cubicle, glasses slightly foggy, I sniffle and wipe my chin, trying to keep the tears from dripping on to my desk.
My heart aches, and the panes are hard to swallow. How am I supposed to be “inspired” and “keep fighting?” All I want to do is go home and sleep. At least in my dreams I can pretend none of this brouhaha is happening.
This morning, I walked down the street feeling like I was in another dimension. Something gravely wrong had happened. Anger, sadness and shock all coalesced to put my mind in a surreal plane.
But when I heard that Kerry conceded, my heart sank, and now I’m just overcome with profound sadness.
I don’t know which is worse: Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court promoting George Bush to presidency, or the country actually electing George Bush to presidency. The idea that power rested in the hands of a few disturbs me immensely. But the idea that millions of people continue to want power to remain with Bush destroys what little faith I had in humanity. And I say “humanity” instead of the American public, because aren’t Americans supposed to embody all that is good in the free world? And there is the rub: what’s supposed to happen in theory doesn’t always happen.
And maybe I’m just naïve. But even before I moved to the States, I grew up with the rhetoric that America is great, America is wonderful. And I believed it. For seven years, I wanted so much to become a citizen of the United States. Now that I can call this land of the free “my country,” all I want to do is leave.
But there’s no reason to be optimistic now. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You can’t trust anyone but yourself. Maybe you can trust those who are reading this raw rant, but that’s probably about it. And Barack Obama. I think I still have faith in him. But that’s really about it.
There is nothing more dangerous than the feeling of helplessness and despair. The combination, coupled with strong conviction and political passion, is what prompts people to pursue suicide bombing. Obviously I wholeheartedly condemn such acts of violence, but I can now fathom why somebody would resort to terrorism. Perhaps the only thing more precious than freedom is life itself. To make a poignant point, you have to take some lives. Even if it’s your own. And tragically, it’s often others, too. Some people may disagree, but the ingredients that nurture terrorism is the probably the same as the ones that prompted the Columbine shooting.
There’s nothing that justifies what happened on Sept. 11. And I still maintain that there’s nothing that justifies what happened in the election of 2000. Both are prime examples of injustice, except in the latter example we manifested the unjust paradigm upon ourselves.
Last night on the subway I saw a Yeats poem that I first read in high school—The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.
That was always the one line that resonated with me when I think about this poem. I read this poem when I was reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Now, what little I learned to analyze in literary analysis is coming back to haunt me.
The best lack all conviction… the worst are full of passionate intensity.
It’s all too scary. The country just elected an administration that epitomizes mendacity and intransigence.
Somehow the phrase that “at least you tried” or “we fought hard” doesn’t comfort me.
My senior year in college, I wrote a feature article for my journalism class, profiling a law professor at NYU who helped write the appellant brief in Roe v. Wade. To this day, Norman Dorsen remains one of the most inspiring individual I have ever met. He was once the head of the ACLU, he fought for the indigent, and he was a part of the defense team in the McCarthy hearing. Now I shudder to think that the rights he fought for us will be obsolete.
My heart aches, and the panes are hard to swallow. How am I supposed to be “inspired” and “keep fighting?” All I want to do is go home and sleep. At least in my dreams I can pretend none of this brouhaha is happening.
This morning, I walked down the street feeling like I was in another dimension. Something gravely wrong had happened. Anger, sadness and shock all coalesced to put my mind in a surreal plane.
But when I heard that Kerry conceded, my heart sank, and now I’m just overcome with profound sadness.
I don’t know which is worse: Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court promoting George Bush to presidency, or the country actually electing George Bush to presidency. The idea that power rested in the hands of a few disturbs me immensely. But the idea that millions of people continue to want power to remain with Bush destroys what little faith I had in humanity. And I say “humanity” instead of the American public, because aren’t Americans supposed to embody all that is good in the free world? And there is the rub: what’s supposed to happen in theory doesn’t always happen.
And maybe I’m just naïve. But even before I moved to the States, I grew up with the rhetoric that America is great, America is wonderful. And I believed it. For seven years, I wanted so much to become a citizen of the United States. Now that I can call this land of the free “my country,” all I want to do is leave.
But there’s no reason to be optimistic now. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You can’t trust anyone but yourself. Maybe you can trust those who are reading this raw rant, but that’s probably about it. And Barack Obama. I think I still have faith in him. But that’s really about it.
There is nothing more dangerous than the feeling of helplessness and despair. The combination, coupled with strong conviction and political passion, is what prompts people to pursue suicide bombing. Obviously I wholeheartedly condemn such acts of violence, but I can now fathom why somebody would resort to terrorism. Perhaps the only thing more precious than freedom is life itself. To make a poignant point, you have to take some lives. Even if it’s your own. And tragically, it’s often others, too. Some people may disagree, but the ingredients that nurture terrorism is the probably the same as the ones that prompted the Columbine shooting.
There’s nothing that justifies what happened on Sept. 11. And I still maintain that there’s nothing that justifies what happened in the election of 2000. Both are prime examples of injustice, except in the latter example we manifested the unjust paradigm upon ourselves.
Last night on the subway I saw a Yeats poem that I first read in high school—The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.
That was always the one line that resonated with me when I think about this poem. I read this poem when I was reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Now, what little I learned to analyze in literary analysis is coming back to haunt me.
The best lack all conviction… the worst are full of passionate intensity.
It’s all too scary. The country just elected an administration that epitomizes mendacity and intransigence.
Somehow the phrase that “at least you tried” or “we fought hard” doesn’t comfort me.
My senior year in college, I wrote a feature article for my journalism class, profiling a law professor at NYU who helped write the appellant brief in Roe v. Wade. To this day, Norman Dorsen remains one of the most inspiring individual I have ever met. He was once the head of the ACLU, he fought for the indigent, and he was a part of the defense team in the McCarthy hearing. Now I shudder to think that the rights he fought for us will be obsolete.
