“The Show Must Go On”

I hadn’t talked to Matt since the middle of the summer, a drastic change from almost living together half the time, when he, our friend Aaron & I would hang out. My phone rang and I thought “oh shit, why can’t people leave me alone? I have enough on my plate already.” But it was him. We had a jovial conversation with loud music and sirens in the background, on his end, mind you. I had way more important things on my mind to think any more about that, for now. Could I find the play I wanted for class, starring who…? Where would I have to drive? VCR? Who was coming over? We ended the conversation with plans to hang out later this week when I got caught up on things. Who knows when that will happen? I kept on with my plans, find and get the play, followed by a VCR, and then Molly, after finding out no one else was coming, because something had happened on campus. Not sure what, but something. I pulled up into the lot and called Molly and while I waited there a girl in hysterics was at a car across me with a group of people. Someone she knew had been shot. I minded my own business. When the cars of her and her companions left, I thought nothing more of it till we got a call a few minutes into the movie. Someone had been shot, and at school no less. Football player . . . . Money in pocket. . . . . Hit a tree, nothing that connected me to who ever it was. Things like this happen every day in town. They just do. I mean this is Memphis. But they had put the dorms on lockdown, we heard so who knows when or if I could take Molly home? But anyway, back to the movie. I don’t remember much before I fell asleep, soon followed by molly I assume. Because we woke up abruptly at 2:53 am as the tape was rewinding and then I drove her home. The lot was much calmer than the last visit, was the only other thought on the subject as I drove home to bed.

The next morning I was up and at it way before I wanted to be. I had things to do, therapy to get ready for, packing/moving to do, class to attend; I was completely wrapped up in my life. My text message alert went off, and then again. Classes were cancelled, but not rehearsal. “The show must go on”, you know. And it stayed that way all week, except the discussion in one class. It just didn’t involve me. Or did it? Everyone else seemed to be unnerved, but me. Was, am I, calloused? Hardened? Stoic? Or am I just heartless? It was more like not allowing myself to be detoured, to keep going. “The show must . . .”

Is it just how we are programmed as Americans? “It happens, just not to us”. And then it keeps happening again and again. Because “I wasn’t involved” and want to stay that way. As long as we take that stance, not only will it not change, neither will we. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, over and over, but expecting different results. If we choose to keep walking and don’t learn or do anything about what we are facing, or worse yet, run from it, because “I don’t want to be uncomfortable”. The spiral we are on will keep winding down, if we are not willing to step forward into a new world that can be ours. Why is it that we run from change when in it lays our only hope of true freedom? What is there really to fear? What if we actually did lose something, or our very lives in the process, The Journey? But caused a ripple that moved the stagnant waters we live in? Would we and our world not have been bettered?

So my questions for you, mayor elect, are. Will you continue leading the city on as it has been and walking away from it all, wrapped up in “your” world? Or will you step forward and become an actual leader of us your peers in our world? Or just another human, proud the “He” had won the people over and is now better than the other?

` Sincerely

V. Adrian Mehr

“Prime Directives Response”

Was silence safer? This really did happen, didn’t it? It’s not some horrible dream, then why can’t I talk about? Is it because there is so much water under the bridge? Water of the same kind? Will complacency become self-protection? Has it already? Am I no different than they are? Have I become more so in the silence I am choosing?

My thoughts on my past, relating my self to the soldiers who were at Abu Ghraib. I understand, more than I can ever to share with you, the pressure to keep face, the fear of others knowing what you have done, the safety of your own silence and the torment no one sees!

I was offended at the flippant and arrogant this paper seemed to be written! First of all, to think that one would have clear reason on anything or anything for that matter, while drinking to the point one no longer has the ability to stand, much less hold composer or stomach contents. And then write about it from the “educated” point of view? Second. to connect reality and our interactions with the other cultures around us, to a television program about visiting alien planets. And expect someone to heed their words afterward? Ii is all most laughable.

More often than not we miss and or are not taught the truth, with all the atrocities that are attributed our country we for get what all it has & is doing for us and the rest of the free world. It is likely that if the “hicks from the sticks” had not pushed forward and made this nation what it is, we and most of our brothers would be under the power of dictatorships. Not even be able to discuss this right now.

extreme / balance

We rove, we look, to find substance to fill . . . . . .

We dwell in one extreme or the other, hopping for balance. . . . .

What we think we see, is not what is. . . . .

Peace with out war?

Love with out hate?

Right, with out wrong?

Would we even know what they were? - V. Adrian Mehr ,

When we think we have found it, it is only one, only part, not the whole.

Balance is two extremes. That blend into reality

We live in a world of balances. With extremes on both ends of the scale that is reality. It is rarely that one end or the other is truth, it is more often than not found in the blend of the others.

Is any one wrong worse than another? I think not! If you ever read the bible, you might recall references to “the judgment seat” or the sheep and the goats”. There is in the words of Christ a much missed, misunderstood, misused, prophetic story. At the end of time the Father sits on his throne to separate the righteous from the evil, but. . . it is those who turned others away because of being wrapped up in what “they” thought needed done and missed the hurt needs of others. Which He later refers to as “Turning Me away”. I would say that if we just focus only on the pain and indignities suffered by those who were prisoners and not also that pain the soldiers my have when they reanalyzed what they have done or indignities of peer pressure, we fail in one regard to learn, change and see the whole picture. I have heard very few others use the quote from a witness in the Nazi trials “I sat there and looked in to the face of my former tormenter and realized that I was capable of all the same evil that he was, if the tables were turned. So I began to weep.”

I think the author gets close to this point. When he seems to return to earth, after he recovers from the hang over he seemed to get from the previous ten pages of drunken, orgy like revelry, that mad this story a slow, rather boring read.

In the end he seems to begin to dive more into the fact that we have all contributed to the evil(s) of this world and all care the gilt in some form, even if we are not the ones directly responsible for a single act. And then he seems to go of on a tangent, I am one usually attuned to metaphors, but for some reason had a lot of trouble with the ones here, as he bounces back to care free Halloween festivities .

"Prime Directive" is from the book, "A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America," by David Griffith. It was published in 2006 by Soft Skull Press out of Brooklyn, New York.

“Like a moth at the flame of so many inaccessible lanterns. … … .. “
“Let us . . . tenderly . . reverence . . . spoil . . .treasure. . . . . a pencil.”
-V. Woolf
Crazy statements? Ideas missed in time passed? Concepts created under the influence of
narcotics?
Or
Words with more than one meaning? Deeper pictures painted beneath the surface?
Metaphors?
Miss. Woolf tells a story of her journey to purchase a “pencil” or does she?
If you read what is not printed on the page, but written just as clearly, you will see more.
Pictures of life
yours
mine
ours!
How many times do we have to come up with some small, almost insignificant reason, in
this case a “pencil”, to do a much larger thing, such as get out of the house? I know I
have and if you are honest, I think you would answer the same.
Do you have the ability? The gift? The warmth?
Of recall?
To walk through life and see more around you than others can? To feel again, what
everyone else has forgotten? The richness of it is rewarding, is it not? Miss. Woolf takes
us on a journey through hers, as we meet melancholy Englishmen, elderly shopkeepers, bowls & knickknacks, as well as lost love! Did you see it?

Should you touch it?
Could you feel it?
We are given vivid sketches of England in the winter, as well as the summer, as we travel
with her. I could al most taste the air around me, as if it was alive with life. I found
myself in ore than one place at the same time. I started to ask myself, the same as she “
here or there? True self . . . . this or thatrare we . . ourselves?” as well as, am I whole?
And then
They
Are gone!
As our remind us of what has happened, can we not stop learning?
Can we keep growing?
Can we move forward with life?
The memories ebb and flow, come and go the same as the river Themes. Can we feel
once again what we did then? But are we retaining what they are there for? To show
what we have learned, to change what we do, to enrich and balance our lives. I hope if
not, that reading this “haunting” that it frightens you further down the road of life, as it
did me.