Men, Work, Violence, Men, Work
Guns

I pulled over into a rest stop in Connecticut a couple of weeks ago because I was getting a little sleepy.  At 2 o'clock in the afternoon I'm settling too much into the Satellite radio, and things are getting a little droopy, so I pull over to sit for a few seconds and then get out to walk into the McDonald's for a coffee.  

It's before Zimmerman has turned himself in, and I have already had a warm greeting from a black man I don't know, a stranger.  It was just a warm exchange of smiles and a nod of the head, the kind of moment that reminds me of what I've read about the signs used during the time of the Underground Railroad, tilts of the hat from a certain kind of hat at a certain corner, etc.  

At this second stop the black man I saw must have been in Islam at some point.  He is especially excited to see me wearing a hat that looks like it might be on the head of a Muslim, but it was actually made by one of my Taiji classmates a few years ago, a woman who is takes a name from one of America's indigenous cultures.

The McDonald's was staffed by Latinos as many of those places are along the stretch in Connecticut.  My smile put them at ease, as it often does, and I have gotten so used to it that I don't so much question the circumstance.  I am beyond looking for trouble.  I am looking for the next place to turn on the highway, and on this trip I was trying to make it into mid-Manhattan for a special spiritual celebration for a friend of mine.  I was hoping to get to the George Washington bridge before rush hour.

I suppose what I am thinking here as I write is how the signs we use to decode life are rapidly changing and how our repertoire increases with age.  My students now were born around 1993, and I am trying to gather notes for what I think are the signs they use to decode our culture and our world.  They were only two years old when the film "Heat" was released.  My parallel for the time space difference for them to try to relate to "Heat" is that of me relating to "Shane," which is not so difficult for me.  It was my father's favorite film, and it is much about American men and their guns.

In some complex way American men associate guns with work.  A farmer needs a good shotgun.  A policeman, of course, needs a gun for the bad people.  In this scene from "Heat" De Niro is a bad person, but he needs his gun to do his job.  His work is stealing from other people and from institutions.  This scene has nothing I would call humor, but the subject of men and guns and work comes up again for me in the most recent "True Grit" when Jeff Bridges' character explains to young Mattie that he robbed a high interest bank in New Mexico and had to made a run for it.  Young Mattie is horrified, bound as she is to her Christian ethics.  But it is again that idea of guns and work.

This week I had to get a new tire, which I was not expecting, and the man who works at the dealership as a general manager gave me a ride back home to get my credit card as I don't carry them.  I would rather not own one, but that seems impossible in our world, or at least my part of it.  I do not own any firearms of any type and have not had one since my military training.  I travel as light as I can, but in traveling I sometimes see how heavy men can be when they are at the business of work, and how much of it touches on guns and violence in some way.  As I rode to get my credit card, the manager was telling me of how he lost his job as a machinist.  We began talking about the difficulty of that work, not the least of which is having correct tolerances.  He was glad to be free of the heaviness of that life.

It's the heaviness, I guess, that makes America such a violent place, the heaviness of men having to think of work as moving weighty things such as bad people and obstinate objects through space, and in that kind of thinking there is not much room for lightness.  But wouldn't it be a great thing if we could have more lightness and would not have to think that heaviness and the "true grit" of bringing your rough intentions to bear on a subject or on a life are the frames that give a man his character?  

I like "Heat," and watch it again from time to time.  This evening I watched it knowing that neither of these men know the real heaviness of the life they are portraying.  They may have known such men, and that may help inform their performances.  But the paradox is having to think of whether what they do is making our lives heavier or lighter.  All we can do is wonder and know for sure that in one tragic moment in Florida a man thought his work involved the heaviness of carrying a gun, or that the act of that gave him a manly character.  

What will it take to save us from ourselves?  I was thinking something like that when I walked up to the counter and asked for a coffee and smiled at the very nice lady about my age who was just trying to make it through the day.  Something will have to help us to think there are other ways to be other than taking, that more of us can give.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
photo by Bill Larson taken at Austin Peay University Clarksville, Tennessee 2010 To the Heart of Things When I listen to people with terminal illnesses talk about the time they have left, it often takes me awhile to remember that I have had to deal with that, too. Maybe it's because I am fifteen years away from the diagnosis. I was forty-three years old, too young to expire according to many, not the least of whom was myself. However, people have died soon after they were born. People die at all ages, but I was busy doing stuff, as they say, when the diagnosis came and along with it the only solution, according to the doctors. They wanted to give me a new heart. I refused to be put on the waiting list. I wanted to try exercise, change of lifestyle, the geographic cure, and most of all, a return to my Taiji and all the related aspects of what we call Chinese medicine. But all that seems like chit chat. I think now of the place where I lived, an apartment on Philly's West...
Read more
Image
LIFE IN THE MONASTERY TEACHING TAI CHI CHUAN IN TAIWAN by Afaa Michael Weaver http://poetscafeunitedstates.spaces.live.com Taipei, Taiwan, is usually a very busy city, and it especially comes alive, at least for me, at night when all the neon signs are lit and a ride through the city in a taxi is mesmerizing. Or a night spent in the night markets with all the food and goods and the loud music of life is more than your sensors can process at times. There is the stinky tofu, so named for the smell it makes when it is being fried. However, disturbing the smell, I love the stuff. You can buy it at any time of the day. The city sits in a basin with the mountains of the northern end of the island surrounding it like a natural wall. The "pei" part of Taipei means north, and this is the northernmost me...
Read more
Image
Mei Nong Taiwan's Beautiful Farms Area Standing here on the top of Lion Mountain in southern Taiwan, you can see the area of Mei Nong, or Beautiful Farm. As you look over to the other side of the valley, you can see the southern end of the mountain range that stretches along the eastern side of the country, forming beautiful seashore areas where, in some places, there is a sheer drop from the mountains to the Pacific ocean. Here in Mei Nong the mountainsides are home to a variety of wildlife, including monkeys who shake the trees in the morning as they settle down to breakfast. This farming area is now being turned into a haven for the newly rich, as the old farm houses built by a Chinese ethnic group known as the Hakka give way to hacienda style houses that look like encampments, some with large metal doors and surrounded by stone walls. Mei Nong includes a smaller area called Long Du, or Dragon’s Belly, where two hundred children have been born who have later ear...
Read more