Reflections on (the middle-eastern side of) this mote of dust
My brother’s back in Texas from Iraq for a while, and I finally got to talk to him today. We talked about the family, thanksgiving, and I found that we now have something in common… we both see the world in a more global way. Me because I’ve been to another country and seen other realities through school/friends etc… him because he’s seen other realities and other lifestyles through the military. Two very different colored/textured paths, but it results in the same sense of self, and the same sense of humility, and the same sense of where you’d like to be and who you’d like to be and what you are most grateful for. We both agree that most people have this unfortunate tunnel vision, and they can’t imagine that there are other realities, and then… that Other becomes something very threatening and frightening if they are ever faced with it.
I’d argue that this kind of national isolation is related to how people come to support something, or come to hate something without really knowing what it is they are judging. they didn’t come to those positions on their own, or after experiencing a broader global picture. Some people jump in to the “I support X!” or “Say no to X!” camps with out thinking. They do it because their family does, or because that’s the pervading atmosphere at their school, or because of a romantic sense of false glory, or a fear of something they don’t understand. If citizens of the world were able to see beyond their national borders more, or their neighbor’s borders even… and see reality through someone completely alien to them, I think the world would be more whole. And, i genuinely think my brother, with whom I probably disagree on a lot of other things, and with whom I don’t always share the same reality, would agree with this.
he sent me two videos he’d made out of photos and some video footage in Iraq. They are collages of images, mostly of his unit, some photos of signs of destruction or the aftermath of something. Some twisted vehicles, some holes in the ground. lots of bombs and metal things that I really wish were just nerf footballs, (which they do resemble). There are also lots and lots and lots of pictures of Iraqi kids. And lots of pictures of the landscape. Sunsets, sunrises. A boy pouring water on an empty dusty field.
I refrained from crying through most of it. But then, there’s this shot of one of the soldiers reading a letter from home. Cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. Couldn’t stop. couldn’t even keep watching after that.
I can’t completely understand why I cry. There are two voices in my head when I’m watching the videos. One is the voice of the message I’m hearing from my brother: that things are vivid and real out there, and that it is a job they are doing… and especially “don’t be afraid. We’re all ok.” The soldiers still smile when they have their pictures taken. They still pose and make silly faces at the camera. They’re still us. The other voice in my head is the one I can’t really understand. It’s the one that makes me sob. It sees the pictures and just feels pure unchecked fear. Fear and pain. Because that boy right there waving at the camera might not be alive right now while I’m typing this. Or those kids studying in that new school room that I’m guessing someone like my brother helped build might not be alive right now.
That water the boy is pouring on the dusty ground is already dried up and long forgotten.
I love that my brother is able to find meaning in all of this, and I love that he is able to share it through his “video poetry”. It’s powerful and I will treasure it always. And I will never forget that these are real waking lives in these photos. That must be why I cry. Because all of it is real. There are no hollywood special effects, and no explicitly evil arch enemy to defeat. It was never like that, and all those who say there is an “evil” to defeat are… dangerous.
There’s just this organic and confusing and complex world, full of contradictions of reality and opposing viewpoints. It’s mixing up the salt of all our dreams and fears into a kind of patchwork quilt stretching around the globe. And sometimes that quilt only makes us colder. Sometimes that quilt keeps us warm.
And all of this is taking place on a tiny speck of blue/green dust.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. — Carl Sagan “Reflections on a Mote of Dust”
The fact that we are at once big and small, powerful and powerless, that we are all the same, and that we’re all 6 billion of us alone and together all at once… it’s a simple and huge system of paradoxes that can’t be undone. They make up the fabric of our everything I think. And each time someone tries to sort it out into categories of “good” “bad” “evil” “useful” “clean” “dirty” “expendible”, it all crumbles into something painful. Our hands have to grow bigger so we can hold more complex and conflicting thoughts and more real people in them.
*sigh*
I love my brother. And I’m glad I could talk to him. Glad that he’s home.
