Sometimes it feels odd to mostly focus on the topics close to hand: education, housing, moving, parenting, writing, life. Sometimes when big things happen in the world (four deadly explosions in London) or in the political infrastructure of this country (Justice O'Connor retiring), I feel the need or desire or wish to say something about them. But then I think about what I would say and I feel tongue tied.
I don't know how it feels to be a Londoner tonight. I don't know any of the dead or wounded. I can't even tell what it feels like to be me, thinking about this. A terrorist attack. Unsurprising. Bush and Blair's so-called war on terrorism has done nothing so much as create more anger, more disgust, more passion, more terrorists. This is a truism. This came true this morning, London's yesterday afternoon. This is blood and suffering and dismay and inevitability and I don't know what to feel. Shaken. Sad. Frustrated. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's enough. Maybe.
I don't know what to think about the Supreme Court. I know I’m supposed to be scared of the Court turning radically conservative, and I am. Balance of power shot to hell and back, maybe. Roe V. Wade dead and buried, maybe. Personal freedoms gradually swept away, maybe. But it's all a maybe until it's a definite. I can't fear what I don't know, at least not on this national level. Maybe it's numbness, maybe just pragmatism, or maybe I simply have other concerns right now. And Justices have a way of changing on the bench, on that bench. Some, anyway. Or maybe I'm just too much of a blind optimist to admit the truth right now.
Maybe it's just that I’m not a political junkie. I have passionate beliefs, but most poliblogs make my eyes glaze over, most political debate makes me sigh and turn away. I care. Yes. I do. Very much. But there's something about the endless debate that feels much like a looped recording playing static and noise with occasional words standing out in the clear. I listened to Air America radio for a while last month. I got bored. I'd rather read dailykos.com and get my liberal fix in more satisfying detail and then walk away, contemplating what is and what could be. I don't want to argue with you, I don't want to convince you because I'm not sure I can. I want to change the world, of course I do. I'm just not sure how. Mostly, I don't find this fun. It's too real for that and I'm just one person, in some ways far from the fray. My choice, I know that. But I've always felt it. Singular, unsure. A disconnect, maybe because my father was in the peace movement in the '60's and I saw the chaos of that up close. Maybe so.
Journalism – and in this I include bloggers who investigate and dig and uncover and discover and I do not include reporters (and bloggers) who simply regurgitate the latest press releases and gather meaningless quotes – journalism is crucial. Truth is crucial, as much as it can be known and felt and understood as such. Truth changes the world, I do believe that. But I don't have that kind of national-level political truth. I just have thoughts and not even terribly profound or new ones, at that. Not about this. About real estate and child development, autism in particular, about huge personal life changes and how to shape a novel, yes, I can talk about those things. I have something to say, something new and maybe important, even. Sometimes I do, I think, yes. But politics? Huge world events? Not so much.
Forgive me if I seem like I don’t care. It's not that, not at all. I simply don't have the words.
Posted by Tamar at July 8, 2005 12:27 AM | TrackBackIf you don't think you change the world by helping parents find their way to helping their children find *their* way...you're deeply mistaken. You do your democratic duty by voting. You do it by seeking out truth, in all its guises. And you do it by making your mark on the world through advocacy for children with developmental delays, through educating their parents, through writing books and essays and even emails that change the way other people think about a particular topic, political or not.
We can't all be bakers, or doctor, or journalists, or politicians, because then there would be no sculptors or psychologists or electricians or SAH parents (which is as much a vocation as any other). The world doesn't need you to dissect politics on a daily basis; we have others who do that job for us. The world needs you to share your own special gifts with it. I need you to share you own special gifts with me.
You do have words, many of them. And they're important. They're; just not the words you think you're supposed to have right this moment.
Posted by: Tiny Coconut at July 8, 2005 06:23 AMAmen to TC's comment. Your words have weight. (as much as any in cyberspace.)
And some of us in your position sigh and settle for actual blogging - Web logging, noting other stuff that moves us -- and hope we do our bit by placing them together. But your blog honestly is more of an online magazine, without the collage effect that makes so many political blogs (including mine) so chaotic.