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November 02, 2005
Death by a thousand papercuts
It wasn't one big thing that drove me to close my laptop for ten days. No family emergency, no personal tragedy. Oh, there was tech stuff that happened -- like finding our tapedrive backup died and I lost quite a bit of work and I was having email issues. But this was more like information overload that blew my emotional circuit breaker. When I found myself sobbing in my car while driving to work over a story I had read, I knew a self-imposed sabbatical was in order.
Even on the road I've always found a moment here or there to dive into cyberspace and feed my muse. However, over the last few months the always-tumultuous world of politics and punditry seems to have taken on a patina even more bizarre then the strange days of the 2004 elections. Facts are dismissed in favor of narratives. Agendas are concurrently denied and advanced. It's as if buildings and bridges and streets were not made of granite and steel and cement, but of marshmallow, and they can slither into whatever shape an individual would wish with the claim that your inability to see the shape as the claimant demands is your fault and proof of your doltishness.
Into this mix are stories on human behavior that continually belie the claim of "civilized." I found myself growing more irritated by irrational, bothered by the boorish, and more annoyed by the assoholic.
Then came the story of the female in San Francisco, taking her small children to the pier, stripping them naked and tossing them to their deaths in the icy waters of the Bay.
The singular horror of this story reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. I only read a few news articles on the day it was reported, then stopped, because it felt as if bands were across my chest being tightened with each sentence describing the event, the frantic frustration of the family and the missed signals by CPS.
I watch my 3 year-old grandsons a couple of times a week and cuddling on the couch with them I couldn't imagine the horror and betrayl those poor children in San Francisco experienced at the hands of the person charged, legally and morally, with their protection.
Unfortunately, that story was not unique. Crimes against children happen everyday. Our society both over-romanticizes children/childhood and dismisses children. This dichotomy has us both enacting ever more laws about child "safety" and then trying to make children autonomous from their parents. We spoil children or treat them as trophies.
Children are unique individuals, borne dependent on their parents - either of blood or love - to care for, and shepherd, them into adulthood. There is no betrayl more great than the parent who harms a child.
Ten days of hobbies outside of the 'puter, of spending time with my parents, my sister, my husband and my kids and the twins have helped me find my calm and reason again. The passion will always be there, but I can again look at the news without feeling just this side of despair.
Posted by Darleen at November 2, 2005 12:15 PM
Comments
- Ok....remedial writing: "there is no betrayal greater than..."... I mean even I never make them kinds of mistakes... (Erm.... oh nevermind...)
- Seriously... Welcome back... again....
- Bang
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