The Kids Aren't Alright

by Matt Durham

In America we elect presidents.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo they elect “lion warriors,” “saviors of the nation,” “supreme combatants,” and “The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.” 

That last one is what Mobutu Sese Soku chose as his title when he was chosen as leader of the country in 1965, a position he would not relinquish until 1997.  Mobutu was a staunch anti-communist, but not for the good of his people. He amassed billions in embezzled funds, leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo in severe economic desolation by the time his regime came to an end. Three United States Presidents granted him official White House visits: Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. As with many post-colonial leaders, America turned a blind eye to the tens of thousands of “dissidents” Mobutu dispatched in the name of eradicating communism.

When the Soviet Union fell, our support for Mobutu waned as well. The power vacuum left behind in the late 1990s set off numerous warring factions itching for power. Each faction laid claim to being the most “Congolese,” and the country has been in state of civil war since 1996.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) sits landlocked in the middle of Africa. This places it in the middle of several different conflicts, which over the years have spilled across borders. Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Chad, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia have all sent soldiers into the perfect storm of warring factions. The countries don’t fight solely for ethnic pride. Within the rolling forest hills of the country lie vast amounts of precious metals used in the production of our cell phones, laptops, and iPods. In 2009 alone rebel groups took in $200 million off of this illegal mineral trade.

Sheer numbers can only tell part of the story. What makes the war most disturbing is how it has affected the next generation in DRC. Children are forced into a conflict they don’t understand. Instead of going to school, young boys and girls are given machine guns and told to fight. Those that are too small to wield guns are given whistles, becoming the first line of defense. They are sent to the front lines and blow their whistles when they see the enemy. Of course, when a combatant sees the children or so much as hears the sound of a whistle, they shoot. If the children try to retreat they are shot at with friendly fire. Either way, their bodies end up as human barricades as child after child falls on the battlefield.

The world has changed a lot over the past two hundred years, some for the better, some for the worse. In this post-colonial world that we live in, the theory of the “dark continent” still holds water. We assume that there is fighting throughout the entire developing world, but don’t really care about specifics. The idea of the “dark continent” stems from 18th and 19th century European cartographers, who were unsure as to the geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. Instead of leaving that area blank, they left that region of world maps dark.

A few hundred years later, those regions are still dark, at least in the minds of many Westerners. Sure, we’ve penciled in borders and have explored the continent, but do we really know the inner workings of how those countries operate? The sad answer is no. It’s hard to indict the textbooks we were all brought up on, but the conflict in DRC is just one of many post-colonial conflicts we rarely learn about, it just happens to be the largest.

Trying to shed some light on this seemingly bleak situation is the Los Angeles nonprofit group Falling Whistles. Their main goal is to rehabilitate child soldiers in DRC, and ultimately end the world’s deadliest war. The group was founded in 2008 by Sean Carraso, a humanitarian worker who helped get the TOMS shoe company off the ground. He teamed up with Yves Muya, a refugee from DRC who came to America looking for help to end the conflict in his home country.

The Falling Whistles program runs under a simple mantra: “Make their weapon your voice.” Carraso and Muya are touring the United States, sharing their stories about post-colonial Africa, and the realities of living in DRC. They sell whistles, much like ones the children in Africa are given. With each city or school they visit, their goal is to set up a network of “whistleblowers for peace,” where people can gather to discuss the conflict and ways to help see it come to an end.

All proceeds from whistle sales go to help with the rehabilitation of child soldiers. With the help of Congolese community leaders that are hand chosen, children who only knew lives of rape, torture, and abuse are given a second chance through a four step program: expression therapy, psychological support, job training, and education. So far the group has rehabilitated 267 former child soldiers, a number that will be built upon in the coming years to insure a lasting peace in a nearly decimated country.

Since 1996 some 6 million people have died in this conflict. 6 million. That makes it easily the deadliest war since World War Two. We live in time where we are more connected than ever. Between the internet and cable news, we have unlimited informational resources at our fingertips, and yet somehow this war has escaped Western eyes and ears. In DRC it is not just seasoned war-lords or paid mercenaries that are doing the fighting, in many cases it is children. The country is losing an entire generation of doctors, lawyers, nurses, athletes, and inventors, all for naught. The discourse around countries that face immediate humanitarian crises like these has to start somewhere. If we want peace in the world as a tangible goal and not just empty rhetoric, we need to be wary that atrocities like these do occur, but there are simple steps we can take to bring about massive change.

I Am a Bad New England-er

by Jordan Stillman

I am a bad New Englander. I have lived in the state of Massachusetts my whole life so I skipped through autumn, suffered through winters, praised God for spring and complained about the summer heat. Each year, I fail to get used to the weather shifts, which is just one of the things that make me such a terrible New Englander. Think of your stereotypical New England native – a liberal, often rude individual with a sense of entitlement. They pahk their cah in Havahd yahd and enjoy clam chowder and lobster. In terms of fulfilling the stereotype I have some of it down, but for the most part, I could be from anywhere.

1. I hate the cold. 
This is probably the most defining aspect of my lousy New Englander-ness. Those from the wonderful state of Massachusetts and the surrounding areas are supposed to be tough and wind resistant. We’re supposed to have thick skin and brave any storm. Snow? We laugh in the face of it! But not so fast; not me. I am extremely sensitive to the cold. Each year it takes me by surprise creeping up over me into a suffocating grip, chilling my bones and bringing on a series of unpleasant seasonal colds. I never go outside without a jacket, a scarf and gloves even if I’m only walking fifty feet between buildings. And when the snowy season comes I bundle up – pajama bottoms, sweatpants, jeans, a long sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, a puffy ski jacket and heavy boots. Of course, that’s only for an extended amount of snow time. I’ve learned the key to being happy in a Massachusetts winter is layers are a must, as is headgear and mittens. Otherwise, I just shiver in my misery.

Over the weekend, I was on a film shoot. I was outside for probably about five or six hours and have never been so cold in my entire life. I say it was because I was wearing a short dress and no jacket, but even if I had been bundled up I probably still would have been complaining. When we finally got back to the indoors I was ill from the cold. I got under my covers, curled into a ball and slept. I thought I’d never be warm again.

The fact is, New England areas aren’t necessarily always the coldest places on earth but they are definitely some of the most varied. It can be fifty degrees one day and below twenty the next. It’s as if the atmosphere is trying to trick me into believing I don’t need that extra jacket, only a sweatshirt will suffice. Next thing you know I’m trapped at the intersection at Boylston and Tremont with a wind chill of -5 and I’m stuck in bed the next day with a head cold. When they say if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll change they aren’t kidding. The winter takes me by surprise because it literally comes out of nowhere. I never see it approach.
            
2. Where the hell am I?
Since I am from around here, people expect me to know exactly where I’m going all the time, as if I was some sort of Massachusetts compass. However, I am not from Boston. I’ve visited Boston many times and live here currently, but I’m originally from Taunton, a small city about 40 minutes away. There have been so many moments when some well-meaning individual has asked where I hail from and upon replying Massachusetts, the response is nearly always something about Boston which is, in fact, not the only city in the state. It’s hard to believe, I know. No one knows where Taunton is. There isn’t even a public transportation system to get there, so no hard feelings.

I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know. I cannot get anywhere without a GPS. I got lost in my own hometown multiple times. Once when I was driving with my father we attempted to get from Taunton back to his town of Bridgewater and wound up in Seekonk, a town over a half hour away, all because I was navigating. For perspective, Seekonk is ten minutes from Providence, which is in RHODE ISLAND. Massachusetts is a state that has layers. There are the cities close to the coast like Boston, but then there’s also Cape Cod, the beach towns which are an entity unto itself. Whenever I visit the Cape I feel like I’ve left the state. It’s an entirely different vibe there. Then there are the towns up near New Hampshire like Lowell and Ayer, lush forest-y places right by the state line. And way out in western Mass are the towns of Worcester and even farther Springfield. It’s like a whole new world out there.

So when I’m asked how to get from point A to point B in any Massachusetts situation, I just smile sheepishly and shrug. Even after all this time living in the city of Boston I’m still not quite sure where I’m going. Just because I’m from Massachusetts doesn’t mean I’m familiar with every square inch of it. Just selective squares. What can I say? Geography isn’t my thing.

3. Seafood is icky. 
I live on the coast, the east coast. Here a fondness for lobster, clams and cod is intrinsically developed from a young age, but not with me. Lobster freaks me out (mostly because I don’t like the way it looks at me when it’s dead), clam chowder is too heavy and clumpy, and cod is alright… sometimes. I’m opposed to fish because I hate that fishy taste. Give me plain old chicken over fish any day. I’ll say no to salmon, scallops, oysters, clams, you name it. (Unless it’s fried because everything tastes better fried.) The only seafood I’m fond of is calamari, which I only eat because it is slathered in batter and therefore doesn’t taste like squid. I only eat the round circles and stay far, far away from any visibly tentacley-tentacles.

4. The Accent and The Attitude 
I find my accent isn’t the stereotypical Boston accent most people expect. I pronounce most of my “r’s,” unless I am upset and talking quickly. My accent isn’t very heavy or pronounced, but I do have a few eccentricities. For example, I say “draw” instead of “drawer.” Everyone likes to give me a hard time about that, but there isn’t much else. I don’t really have the irrationally unfriendly attitude most other New Englanders tend to cherish. In general, I’m kind of meek. I’m always willing to help another person out on the street. I am usually the person being shoved aside rather than doing the shoving. I have occasionally yelled at a car but that’s mostly because no one in the state of Massachusetts can drive. I try to keep things pleasant.

5. What’s the outdoors? 
Hi Outside, I’m Jordan. Nice to meet you. I find that conversation happens over and over again with the introduction of nice weather. The outside and I have never been what you’d call close. I’m not big on camping and am extremely anti-bugs. A New Englander is meant to be one with the natural world. Our odd weather patterns make it something truly wondrous to behold. New England foliage is breathtaking and what with the crisp autumn weather or light spring afternoons and lush hills and forests, you’d think I’d be all about frolicking or trekking up a mountain, taking in the fresh air. Au contraire. I admire nature, I truly do, but from a distance. I prefer to observe in a noncommittal fashion. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for the occasional jaunt outside. I like taking walks in the woods and I love beaches, but it’s just not as frequent as one would expect. I don’t always react well to the outside either. One summer I somehow managed to obtain fifteen mosquito bites on each leg because I refrained from bug spray one evening. It was very uncomfortable. I also burn brightly in the sun and SPF 30 is an absolute must, if not higher. And this summer I flipped backwards in a chair at a party due to a spider that was too close for comfort. It happens.

The irony is evident, I know. I’m a hermit in the winter and burn to a crisp in the summer. Is there no happy medium? Can’t I just be satisfied with the weather? Yes and No. Just because they aren’t to my liking doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them. It’s part of what I love about being from Massachusetts. The weather’s unpredictable – the winters are freezing, the summers are obnoxiously hot – but I like it that way. In fact, I’m not quite sure what I’d do with myself if I had regulated weather patterns. It just wouldn’t be right.

I am not the stereotype. There are certainly aspects of my personality that match certain parts of the stereotype like how I yell at cars and have a high degree of New England pride. I love being from Massachusetts. I love our history and the oldness of our cities, the people who aren’t quite like anyone else on earth. I love the way the leaves turn colors in the fall and the way it looks when it snows so hard you can’t see anything but a thick blanket of white. I even love the summer storms that make it difficult to drive on the highway. Part of being from Massachusetts and likewise from New England is the acceptance of one’s relationship with the weather. I love it. I hate it. But it’s part of my upbringing and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t fit perfectly here. I hate the cold and bugs and cod. I probably complain more than most New Englanders. But that’s just me. That’s my New England and for me it works. New England is a region built on a moody people with serious weather schizophrenia.  I complain because it’s my right as a Massachusetts citizen and in my discomfort I can sympathize with thousands of others, who when I step out the door and say “Damn, I wish I had worn a jacket,” know exactly what the hell I’m talking about.

The Three Dreams of Elian Montoya, Part One

by Brendan Mattox

Elian Montoya sat motionless, staring at the Charles River from the plush leather couch in his darkened office on the 59th floor of the John Hancock Tower.

He closed his eyes again and attempted to force the sleep that would not come to him naturally. His head ached as he pushed his eyelids against each other and sunk lower into his seat. 
...
It was no use.

For the time being, he would have to remain awake. He stood up and walked out of the room.
            
Elian yawned as he wandered the deserted hallway of Pierce & Pierce, Esqs. Turning left at the end of the hall, he rounded the open doorway into the break room, where the broken green dashes of the microwave clock read quarter past nine. He popped open the clear glass door of the refrigerator and instinctively reached for a chilled espresso. Pulling the can out, he stared intensely into the label, had second thoughts, and picked up a bottle of expensive Japanese water from the bottom shelf instead.
            
Straightening up, he stopped to cock his head to one side. He could hear the click-hum of the cooling unit in the fridge, and in the distance on another floor somewhere, the dull mechanical whine of the night shift cleaning some executive’s office. But Elian Montoya heard another sound, one that he’d never heard in the offices of Pierce & Pierce, Esqs. this time of night.
            
It sounded to him like a slow mechanical tick-tick-tick, set to the time of a slow waltz from a bygone era that Elian barely remembered. He had not heard the tune since the day of his sister Illia’s wedding, a day he would’ve given anything not to have remembered. Taking a swig from the bottle, Elian decided the only proper thing to do was to investigate.
            
The overhead lights in the bullpen were shut off, leaving the rows between the desks to be illuminated by the fluorescent strips that ran along the ground next to the walls of fuzzy gray cubicles. Outside the window, the first flurries of a December snow storm blinked in the lights of the buildings below. Elian paused half-way across the room, and with the ticking still pounding in his ears, placed his forehead against the cold glass of the window.
            
He could feels his heart beat with the metronome. He sighed a heavy sigh that fogged a portion of the glass, and quickly smudged it away with his left hand. He shut his eyes once more and wished he was asleep at home in his warm bed, not the office. The legal firm of Pierce & Pierce demanded that his every waking hour be tied to defending a man he did not want to defend.

Never mind that he didn’t have time. He was told that if this were the last case he ever defended, he would finish it. Elian’s reputation was too good for him, and the file had him whipped – it was his 6th consecutive night staying late at the office.
            
His head ached at the thought of his meeting with his client, Philip Gunderson, the next morning. Nine-thirty am sharp, only half a day away now. The high-profile drug dealer’s cold stare bore into him even now, his cold blue eyes crossing the hours between their last meeting and this very moment. Those eyes, those brilliantly blue eyes. The rest of Gunderson’s face was blurry in his memory now, but his eyes stared at Elian’s whenever he closed his own.

Back in the office, Elian sighed and forced his lids open. The ticking had stopped. The office was dead still.

Completely still, in fact.

The hum of the building heating system, the buzz of the florescent strips, the vacuums of the cleaning men - there was nothing.

No sound.

The silence pressed in on him, growing more pronounced. A ringing began in Elian’s ears, at first first distance, then louder, until it became a single tone. Elian’s heartbeat quickened. What was going on?

He turned back from the window, eyes flailing wildly in their sockets unsure of his place. He gripped the top of the cubicle wall next to him, and held tight to the grey felt as his legs gave and kicked, one, two, out from underneath of him. His foot struck the potted plant near the window, knocking it to the floor. His sweaty palms slipped on the wall and Elian toppled to the drab gray and maroon carpet of the Pierce & Pierce offices, his breathing labored. The ringing grew louder.

And then it stopped.

Silence.

And then.

Tik

Tik

Tik

The metronome began it’s horrific beating again, faster now than it had in the past. It echoed through the office, starting back by the break room and ending in the corner by Elian’s office. It warped in and out of tune as it reverberated, cutting the dead air around him like a knife. Elian still struggled to breathe, inhaling fiercely against the empty vacuum around his head. His lungs collapsed and in his final moments he heard the ticking sound beat loudly against his ears as his vision blurred and then went black. He saw his body lying on the floor in front of the window, the December flakes falling thickly in the background.

Elian bolted upright in his chair, gasping for breath. The face of the ticking grandfather clock in his office read 11:30 pm.

To be continued next week...

A Separate Peace

by Jacqueline Frasca


It was printed in the closed expression
on his face, too plainly printed to mistake; 
he needed me. He knew I was the least 
trustworthy person he had ever exchanged
mischievous glances with - I had even 
told him, but there was no other excuse 
for the remoteness in his voice; he wanted 
me around. Every small fracture of existence
except the smile in his eyes that would 
alight when I reversed my previous 
indignity lost their meaning to me. 

He told me, “You know, when you love something
it loves you back in whatever way it 
has to love.” – I disagreed with him. 
Every ounce of everything I knew told 
me differently - but like everything else 
about him, all his thoughts and beliefs, it
should have been true. I could not argue. 
I suddenly knew nothing at all. 

He let me run from it all. The sound of 
my escape was pitched off short in the vast,
immobile dawn, as though there was no room
amid so many glittering sights for
my sound to intrude. But they pulled me back 
in, as the snow pulled me back toward this mess. 

For hours, and sometimes for days, I felt
the expanse, without realization, 
of the private explanation of the world. 
I ceased to have any real sense of it. 
And this alone was liberation we 
had torn from the grey encroachments, 
an escape we had concocted - a separate peace.

Let Yourself Let it Go

by Jacqueline Frasca

A WOMAN’S HEART

Sadly deprived. That worries me.
But I’m not trying to understand things;
I can’t make sense out of people.

I’ve lived without the big red mass of plastic camouflage,
taking advantage of a moment when no one was looking.
Keep an eye on a woman’s heart - difficult not to call
a great many deprived; right to work, night duty.
Supposed to see that they did not collect all and place them

in a large safe.

HE SHOULD HAVE LIED

Vaguely sensing that what he’d done could not be mended – 
was gone, stopping, halting; 
sullenly evading the question,

he could not admit his own troubles. 
“I, the poet with the cigarette teeth, calls on others, ‘Protect me!’”

NO BOILING WATER FOR TEA

That night secret messages were phoned to be brought 
and left to wait, to prevent,
leaving the dark and it seemed as if not air but flame 
were entering 
and leaving his lungs.
Just before the change, freedom had come to a stop: 
an excess of love and fidelity passing, trembling through the frost like a series of blows
nor did he notice the women of the night,
yet it was still more curious along the right side of the hall.

LANGUAGE IS A TOOL OF PRODUCTION

Iron will. Inflexible will.
Language is a tool of production, fruitful mind unwound – 
sharp and supple nighttime mind.

All best ideas sentences should be – how to stretch, how to bind all motion escaping.

THE PIT BECKONS AGAIN

You scan me: melted at once and then stopped.
It was turning cold – though it was almost 5 a.m., the skies were still pitch black.
Stared, but did not see.
Waiting, quivering.

KISSING IS FORBIDDEN

Understood why, answering glance - 
Yes, for you, kissing is forbidden.

Pacing the room like guards to search within, allowing a fumbling at his lacerated heart.
Tracing paper on which he had written his story
as though it were an ordinary thing.

LIFE IS NO LOVE STORY

Don’t want to add anything: “The one you love is closer than you think,”
the girls nearer the window called,
but they found that too cold and uncomfortable.
Lying possessed other intriguing robes, but
with great restraint, 
she had grown used to doing this.

PETTY PRISON MATTERS

For others it comes with first love.

Each morning he doubted if they were not.

“All right, I’ll come,” he said, 
stretching petty prison matters to help prepare something shameful, 
revealing the very essence of our existence.

“I love to tell the hours by lunch and tea.”
Recited these remarkable, devoted capacities out of nothing but the name 
in human language.

YOU ONLY HAVE ONE CONSCIENCE

Had left that not everyone understood: two chapters away
there was nothing else to do.
The exit door opened, lying, burning with curiosity
You only have one conscience.

IT CAN BE IMPERFECT

Through what gate do these breezes blow?
On shaky philosophical ground, falling obediently into place, he had quietly changed.

You can imagine a high level of deep personal devotion:
we only live once – that’s not typical anymore.
The die-hard confirmed: had been cancelled.
Not one of his books had been published.

A DUEL NOT ACCORDING TO THE RULES

Husbands in the city – not have to go back home, no longer of the darkness,
and kissed the embroidered cuffs of her long sleeves: 
“…was it her fault that the time of her fullest ripening had come and that she was destined by the implacable laws of nature to fall, like a September apple, into the hands of whoever reached for her” ?

CLENCHED FISTS

Slender young hallways of the special prison, chasing prisoners back to their rooms -
he could not tear himself away from her.
She would pull away from him before morning.

He, being a bastard, would eventually go to bed,
but they had forgotten about sleep.
Disturbing their argument with each blow that was exchanged – shame on you.
They told you real things – tell me you listen to them. 
Should I listen to them? As if lives mean the world’s collapsing.
Black to white, the ends justify.

HIS FAVORITE PROFESSION

Active in different cashiers,
in different buildings and on different floors,
security affairs were of equal rank – see the other.

NO, NOT YOU

“Listen, I didn’t force you. I’m going now.”

“Wait a minute, give us one day more. What do you mean not guilty?
Not guilty of anything at all?”

He left without a single good word, still it was painful.
It was as though everything they had so delicately trampled on, 
the last night of the world’s passion of dedication - 
all this time they kept pressing on in the wrong direction.

They sat there in silence.
“No, not you.”
She could not let this high and solemn moment of her life happen casually.

MEAT

He burst in angrily. “When someone’s decent to you, you treat them like-”
They wouldn’t meet. 
They kissed each other’s cheeks, took the open book, and went off 
and left it lying there on the floor.
They were taken and from time to time did not deign 
His despair.

The Last Neanderthal

by Tiernan Cahill

We walked until the world ended – my woman and I. Before that, on the plains, there were more – my little boy with the dull hair, my sister and her two children, some other families, the young man with no woman who was taught to watch the sky. And long before that, before my child was born, in the mountains, there were many families, many young men and women and the older men who watched the skies and taught the cleverest of the younger ones to say when it would be warm and when it would rain.

They are all gone now, but I can remember their faces as if they were before me. Sometimes, I think I can remember them better now that they’re gone. Sometimes, when I cannot make fire or the night is warm enough, I see them in the outer shadows. We heard stories, as children, that if the bodies of the dead were not given to the sky, they would come alive when no one was looking and follow their families on the earth. We had tried our best out on the plains, but no one but the men who watched the sky reallyknew how to move a body there. And when the others were gone, I tried to carry out the ritual as I had seen it done. It was so much harder to cut the flesh and break the limbs of my sister when she went. Even though I knew that she felt no pain, that I was releasing her from the pain of her body, I had to close my eyes. The stone slipped over smooth bone and cut wrong. I hoped the birds wouldn’t mind. I held my hand, where I had cut it by accident, over her corpse and let the blood drip out, thinking some taste of life might encourage them. I never found out if my ruse worked. I couldn’t bear to watch her leave the world in pieces, so I told the others we had to keep moving.

My sister had died in her sleep, having been too warm in the head for many weeks. The air in this place was like that, much too warm, it smothered you. We were all afraid for some time afterwards that there was poison in it. The children – mine and my sister’s – would feel each other’s heads in the morning and dunk their hair in streams to keep the heat from entering them. When I think of them now, what I remember most clearly is their hair: My boy’s hair, soft and dull, decorated with beads of clear water. My woman’s hair, bright and glistening as though it were alive. She never cut it because she said it felt like she was cutting into herself, so when she ran it would float out behind her like fire from a thrown torch. On the darkest nights, I think I can see the light of it slipping from tree to tree. This is the only thing I see at night that does not make me afraid.

She died protecting our son from the dark men who came over the hills. He had wandered off, hoping to find… I don’t know what he hoped to find out there, really? Sometimes I think berries, because he knew his mother liked them. Sometime I think it was just a child’s whim. We didn’t think too much of it, since my sister’s younger one was sick too, with a warm head. Maybe he went to get water from the stream to cool her. We heard him shriek, once, and that was all. My woman went first, before I could even think what to do. I told the young man to take my sister’s children and run. He slung one over each shoulder so that the last I saw of them were the pale faces of the children looking back at me as they slipped into the woods, bobbing up and down with his steps.

I turned and ran in the direction of the scream, not knowing which way exactly to turn until I heard hoarse cries and snapping branches off in the deep brush. I found them tangled together, my woman and this scrawny-looking creature, with hair the colour of tree bark. She had her long fingers wrapped around his throat, pressing so hard that you could see his sand-coloured skin poking out between her fingers. His eyes were wide open, the widest eyes I’d ever seen, staring up through the trees at the sky. She was stretched out on top of him, a smooth spear-shaft embedded in her back. The blood from her wound saturated her hair, but seemed to make it all the more beautiful and vibrant. It looked, truly, as if it might rise and embrace me in soft comfort, entirely without her. Our child was gone.

I turned this way and that, mute and rooted to the earth, searching the brown trees for another flashing of red hair. There were sounds all around me, a soft whispering and snapping branches, a hoot or the rustling of leaves. I could see movement, but it was all the same, the men and the trees. I felt dizzy. The woods began to echo with a wailing that grew, from a single voice, as if the wind, to a whole chorus. I remembered how my father told me that the dark men hunt like wolves, they surround their pray and drive it mad with howling. I tore my cutting stone from around my neck and, rather than crying out with rage as I told myself I wanted, rather than rushing into the woods to slaughter as many of the beasts as I could, I knelt down and cut a handful of my woman’s bloody hair. Clutching this, feeling the blood between my fingers, I ran back the way I had come. I stayed low, pretending in my broken mind that I was a deer, fleeing from my own people’s spears.

I never found the young man and my sister’s children, although I searched the woods for sign the same way I would hunt a very specific animal. Being clever as he was, I imagined he knew how to hide such things. I was thankful he did, for I imagined the dark men could hunt as well as I, although I’d heard stories that they eat roots and berries for food and only hunt for the taste of meat and not its substance. I wonder sometimes that a race so much like the lowest of the beasts could be so dangerous. They eat like raccoons yet hunt like wolves. They speak, but it does not sound like speech. They walk, but it is a strange walk, like they are held on their shoulders by invisible hands. They make fine cutting stones, yet do not cut their dead so that they can leave for the sky. I find, now that I am alone, that I do not hate them, nor do I fear their smooth sticks and sharp stones, but I fear their presence. It disturbs me to think that their feet will forever tread over the valley where I grew into a man and found my woman. It disturbs me to think that nothing beautiful will grow there ever again. Sometimes, when I am very hungry I have nightmares where I see her as one of them, short with small hands, smooth skin, but pale as our child’s was, and still that bloody red hair.

I have come now, at last, to the end of the world. The dark men and the walking dead of my family can follow me no further because I have nowhere further to run. The great water stretches out in three directions from this place. The sun rises and sets in its depths and I am terrified twice daily when I can see, in the water, that blood, that hair. I feel surrounded by blood. I think that when I die, I will stay in this place. There will be no one to offer my body to the sky, so I will just lie here. But I think, also, how I left her body there, so tense and stiff and permanent. And perhaps if I lie here, her blood all around me in the water, then one day she will come. I find a smooth, flat rock and lay myself down. I spread the dry hairs I have carried all this way, now caked with blood, across my chest. And here, at the end of the world, I wait for someone to find me.

The Disaster Equation

(Time x Proximity)

Human Coefficient

=

Date Disaster Enters Lexicon

by Alecsandra Washburn

Nothing brings us together like a good catastrophe. The media bottlenecked around Katrina, 9/11, the Columbia disaster, the JFK assassination, and focused our nation’s attention on catastrophe, with just cause. Humans crave tragedy and heartbreak because they bring us to our emotional asymptotes. Disaster surprises us, tries our morals, and disrupts the banality of our daily routines. For humans, a species bred for conformity but thirsting for the exhilaration of divergence, catastrophes can be both horrifying and invigorating.

Ruth Woerner, a survivor of the San Francisco earthquake in 1919, said, “For several years after I wished that there would be another earthquake so that I could hear things smash again.” It’s a rather extreme example in an extreme situation, but

the message is clear. Having bit from the apple, we desire more fruit.

Disasters affecting all of us, humanity at large, are imprinted into our memories. Anything, whether its origins stem from Mother Nature or the human race, that brings thousands to their knees can fascinate for centuries (E.G, the bubonic plague). Calamities of blockbuster proportions become part of our metaphoric vocabulary. It was a failure of titanic proportions. Their project went as well as Chernobyl. She fell like the Berlin Wall. It blew up Hindenburg style. We use these words to convey distressed emotions. They’re our way to let everyone know something horrible is happening. But then there are the words we don’t use, disasters we don’t include in our cataclysmic lexicon. There are hundreds of disasters worthy of an allegorical epithet we consciously neglect. Example: My matzo balls are sinking like the bodies in the ninth ward. For those without a sadistic sense of humor, I bet you cringed reading that.

So then why is it socially permissible for us to joke about certain disasters, while others invite awkward stares from listeners? The difference lies in the numbers.

For a disaster to be indoctrinated into our vocabulary it must meet certain standards. Time, for one, is critical. A disaster that happened five years ago versus one that happened seventy-five years ago (Katrina versus the Hindenburg) will weigh on us in different ways. The more time between the disaster and the current date on the calendar, the more likely it is to be used as retort. Consider the plague and the holocaust. By the time the plague fled the continent, an estimated 100 million people died, reducing Europe’s population to 350 million. The holocaust only killed six million people. In number alone, the death toll for the plague is much more staggering. However, the plague took place over 400 years ago and the holocaust was only 70 years ago. You can joke about the plague, but you can’t walk into your friend’s kitchen and say, “It’s hotter than an Auschwitz oven in here.” Age of occurrence is critical. Let’s call this the time variable.

Keeping this in mind, it should be noted that the time variable is directly affected by the proximity constant. The JFK assassination happened 50 years ago, Chernobyl was only 25 years ago. More people died in consequence of the Russian

nuclear explosion. Malformed children in surrounding areas are born even today. But Chernobyl went down in the nation of our Cold War adversary. JFK was an American president killed on American soil. Where a catastrophe occurs influences

how quickly we add it to our list of disaster terms.

This could explain our reaction to two recent earthquakes. Before the earthquake in Haiti, there was an earthquake in the Qinghai province of China. The Chinese earthquake killed thousands, most famously thousands of school children. In a nation with a one-child-per-family policy, losing a child is tantamount to losing your entire family lineage. In Haiti the death toll wasn’t nearly so staggering. But after the Haitian earthquake there was a call to action. Celebrity phone-a-thons, adverts from the White House, volunteers rushing to the airports, everyone felt the need to help Haiti rebuild. Not so after China. Yes, it was a disaster. And yes, we felt bad for them. But no one sent care packages. This isn’t just because China is a competing super power; it may be just because China is farther away than Haiti.

But none of these determine when words become metaphors for disaster so much as the human coefficient. Overall human death toll is the one thing that most shapes our disaster vocabularies. And not just the numbers of dead souls, but also

whom those people were. Think about Titanic. Thousands of people died, but the mass majority of the dead were immigrants, blue-collar workers. Those with money and power, the writers, artists, shapers of culture survived. Francis Patrick Mary Browne, a passenger aboard the R.M.S. Titanic, is a photographer best known for his photos of the vessel just before it sank. Margaret Brown was a famous millionaire aboard the Titanic, and the only woman to row a lifeboat to safety. Both Browne and Brown are iconic passengers of the R.M.S. catastrophe, both were somewhat rich and famous, and both survived. Browne went on to become and even more famous photographer and Brown became a revolutionary in the women’s rights movement. Those nameless hundreds who sank with the ship were the second and third class passengers. And the phrase “it sank like the titanic” has been around for a while. This makes the human coefficient two parts. It is combination number of people dead divided by number of famous people dead plus one [losers/(famous+1)].

So next time a plane runs through a building or Vesuvius erupts again, crunch the numbers and change up your time variable. There is a point, whether weeks or years later, when disasters become jokes and insults. See if you can figure out when

it will be acceptable to say, “The kid fell down like the Twin Towers”.

According to my predictions, that sentence should be acceptable around 2110.