Death in the Afternoon and in the Evening

Death in the Afternoon and in the Evening

One was death in the afternoon. It happened yesterday and very publicly. Three people died and over one hundred were wounded, seventeen critically. The deaths and injuries were unexpected, resulting from terrorist bombings 17 seconds apart, at the finishing line of a marathon race in Boston, MA. Public outrage was swiftly delivered. Nobody seemed to delve into why such a horrible act would occur.

Nobody seemed to ponder and invoke history and go back to acts of atrocity and barbarity at Wounded Knee and My Lai, the 1972 Christmas bombings in Hanoi which lasted 12 days, the carpet bombings carried out by B-52 bombers during the height of the Vietnam War, the massacres inside Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, not counting the ill adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the very long blind support of Israel which illegally annexed Arab lands.

Everybody appeared self-righteous. Everybody loudly decried the cowardice of the perpetrators. Everybody seemed to forget about karma and causality.

The death in the evening was private and no less heart-rending. A tree cutter was brutally rejected by an ambitious, enterprising woman who had a young son who had a fixation problem about pipes and tigers and who had an affectionate relationship with the tree cutter. Temporarily---and that was all it took: a temporary lapse of judgment---insane, a few days after the brutal rejection, the tree cutter was out drinking by himself and on the way back decided to stand in the railroad tracks. The woman cried after hearing of the news which was reported in the paper.

Eight years later, the young son got better, his fixation seemed to vanish and he was now a freshman in college. The woman got married to a respectable, white-collar worker who advised her in the following terms when she seemed to be hesitant to board a train to visit her son who attended college in New York City

"He robbed himself of his opportunity (of seeing your son doing very well in school). It's over now. He wanted an ending and he got what he wanted. He made it happen."

The moral of the death in the evening was this: it was horribly stupid to kill yourself over a woman. She might cry upon learning of your stupid act, but she would get over that and her life would go on while yours was finished for a stupid cause.

"People claim that death is not alive, yet it is ever-happening and constant. Death doesn't die. It feeds on loved ones and enemies alike and makes itself stronger and everywhere. It is insidious and comes in the form of everything. Whole nations have been killed by neighboring states on purpose and some people die by accident and every year a small city could be populated by the souls of those who chose to put themselves to death. We are here now, alive, and might be gone before morning. Death connects everything. All things that are alive have the same end. The fragility of things, the wish that a parent or spouse has to keep a child or spouse safe. The prayers, religious or not, spoken or silent. These things have their own freezing point, where they turn to ice-death. And that freezing pint is only one degree from life, and often moves faster than blessings and prayers." (Scott Wolven, "Controlled Burn", pp 110-111)

Wissai
April 16, 2013