Going to War in flip flops
Scott left about 6:15am. I hunkered under the covers. I had got up with him at 5:45am and made his lunch and morning smoothie. I left HBO on. There was a doc called Witness: Sudan. I was sleepy but got sucked in. This photojournalist named Veronica V (some long ass french name I'm not going to bother to spell much less look up to spell it right) following "The Arrow Boys". Local self-formed militia in the Sudan and Uganda. (She visited two other places but damned if I can remember the names) They are hunting General Kony. Terrorist, murderer and kidnapper of children.
Sidenote: BBC International news is on the TV. Reporter just said, "With 36 million of the world's inhabitants living in slavery, slavery is up a quarter from last year."
*shiver* Sounds like a Wall Street quote. The DOW is up, slavery is up, and unemployment is down. Good news for investors. The economy is showing no signs of stopping this upward push.
In fairness, it is an expose of living in slavery, so the BBC isn't for slavery. Just a hell of a quote.
So, anyway. I'm watching this pregnant French woman traveling with the militia and later the Ugandan army through the jungle. Snuggled under my blanket, I felt a twist of jealous shame. I envied Miss Veronica V. Make-upless honest face, rapid fire monotone french voice, and sporting her olive beige wardrobe, safari slouch look. I loved her. Some African guy on a motorcycle starts harassing in her in the street. Seeing her camera, he demands her papers. Her reply?
"How dare you! Who are you? Where are your papers? You are rude. I am a guest in your country. Don't you curse at me!"
A friend of mine climbed Machu Pichu in Brazil with a friend of his. I would listen to his stories of drinking cocaine tea and following a guide into the mountains. He stayed the night in some village. He slept in a hammock, and in the morning he and his friend filmed themselves crossing a bamboo crossbeam over a pool of piranhas. I was nearly faint with envy. I told him how amazing and fun that sounded. And how it sucked that as a woman, I would never be able to travel like that. Take a girlfriend and go drink and party my way thru the Brazilian rainforest to Machu Pichu. I'd go with a guy, but I still feel like it would be dangerous. My friend looked at me with amazed sadness.
"Really?" He asked me. "You seriously feel like that? You don't think as a woman you can travel as freely as me? That is sad. I don't think that's true. I'm sad you think that."
I was ashamed I'd admitted it out loud to him. I'm never really afraid when we travel. I've been worried, embarrassed, frustrated, angry, and all the lovely emotions we blot out later when we retell our tales. But hardly ever afraid. I was afraid in Amsterdam when the big Nordic guy with the heavy dumb German accent followed us. He was wearing a big fuzzy anarok, and was tripping his balls off. He kept asking questions like
"where is the nearest 7-11?"
and
"Can I go back with you guys?"
Stupid shit. But we dodged and jogged away, and still he'd find us. I would see that anorak in the cold mist, backlit by the gingerbread holiday lighting that was hanging over every street. He was stalking us, and my inner monkey couldn't shake the feeling we were being herded away from our hotel to a trap. I trust my inner monkey now. For years I brushed off misgivings about situations. Now when I feel the sinking pit in my gut I listen.
I felt it then and made the guys go back to the hotel bar. To be fair, we had already eaten dinner, gone to a coffeehouse, then to the punk metal bar a block down, and bought steaming hot pastries on the street after smoking a joint in an alley. I was not being the killjoy at the beginning of the evening. My three heartily drunk and stoned escorts were positive nothing was wrong and no one had the stones to jump four people, two of which were over 6 ft tall. I disagreed and was more than willing to be called a pussy if it got us back to our nice warm hotel, with the doors that locked. That night I was scared. Scott still calls me a pussy about that.
I still maintain that I'm right, and that fuckstick was working us. I too much an old country girl to not recognize a sheepdog herding the sheep when I see one.
Scott told me while I was at Chapman for Journalism, "No War Reporting--ever."
I told him thanks there goes my Pulitzer. But I was a little relieved. I do envy Veronica V. I wept when Sean Penn stood on the wings of a plane flying over an active volcano in Walter Mitty. I watched Salvador starring James Woods and admired his (and the reporters his character was based on) sang froid in dealing with the despots and machine gun toting death squads. But I really don't want to end up raped, shot and buried in a shallow grave beside a lost highway. I'm not that brave. But I feel a tug when I watch docs with reporters going to war torn countries and disaster areas. They are the fourth estate, they are history's witnesses. Every writer I've ever really loved had been a reporter sometime in their career. Sometimes I feel I've cheated myself by not being one of them. I find enormous satisfaction in what I do, and how I help people. But my punk side, my loyal dissident side, my truth telling hall moniter tattle tale self wonders what I might have been if I'd pushed getting into journalism. I had my reasons for not doing it in 2006, but they seem awful hazy about now.
Well, never say die, right?
Sidenote: BBC International news is on the TV. Reporter just said, "With 36 million of the world's inhabitants living in slavery, slavery is up a quarter from last year."
*shiver* Sounds like a Wall Street quote. The DOW is up, slavery is up, and unemployment is down. Good news for investors. The economy is showing no signs of stopping this upward push.
In fairness, it is an expose of living in slavery, so the BBC isn't for slavery. Just a hell of a quote.
So, anyway. I'm watching this pregnant French woman traveling with the militia and later the Ugandan army through the jungle. Snuggled under my blanket, I felt a twist of jealous shame. I envied Miss Veronica V. Make-upless honest face, rapid fire monotone french voice, and sporting her olive beige wardrobe, safari slouch look. I loved her. Some African guy on a motorcycle starts harassing in her in the street. Seeing her camera, he demands her papers. Her reply?
"How dare you! Who are you? Where are your papers? You are rude. I am a guest in your country. Don't you curse at me!"
A friend of mine climbed Machu Pichu in Brazil with a friend of his. I would listen to his stories of drinking cocaine tea and following a guide into the mountains. He stayed the night in some village. He slept in a hammock, and in the morning he and his friend filmed themselves crossing a bamboo crossbeam over a pool of piranhas. I was nearly faint with envy. I told him how amazing and fun that sounded. And how it sucked that as a woman, I would never be able to travel like that. Take a girlfriend and go drink and party my way thru the Brazilian rainforest to Machu Pichu. I'd go with a guy, but I still feel like it would be dangerous. My friend looked at me with amazed sadness.
"Really?" He asked me. "You seriously feel like that? You don't think as a woman you can travel as freely as me? That is sad. I don't think that's true. I'm sad you think that."
I was ashamed I'd admitted it out loud to him. I'm never really afraid when we travel. I've been worried, embarrassed, frustrated, angry, and all the lovely emotions we blot out later when we retell our tales. But hardly ever afraid. I was afraid in Amsterdam when the big Nordic guy with the heavy dumb German accent followed us. He was wearing a big fuzzy anarok, and was tripping his balls off. He kept asking questions like
"where is the nearest 7-11?"
and
"Can I go back with you guys?"
Stupid shit. But we dodged and jogged away, and still he'd find us. I would see that anorak in the cold mist, backlit by the gingerbread holiday lighting that was hanging over every street. He was stalking us, and my inner monkey couldn't shake the feeling we were being herded away from our hotel to a trap. I trust my inner monkey now. For years I brushed off misgivings about situations. Now when I feel the sinking pit in my gut I listen.
I felt it then and made the guys go back to the hotel bar. To be fair, we had already eaten dinner, gone to a coffeehouse, then to the punk metal bar a block down, and bought steaming hot pastries on the street after smoking a joint in an alley. I was not being the killjoy at the beginning of the evening. My three heartily drunk and stoned escorts were positive nothing was wrong and no one had the stones to jump four people, two of which were over 6 ft tall. I disagreed and was more than willing to be called a pussy if it got us back to our nice warm hotel, with the doors that locked. That night I was scared. Scott still calls me a pussy about that.
I still maintain that I'm right, and that fuckstick was working us. I too much an old country girl to not recognize a sheepdog herding the sheep when I see one.
Scott told me while I was at Chapman for Journalism, "No War Reporting--ever."
I told him thanks there goes my Pulitzer. But I was a little relieved. I do envy Veronica V. I wept when Sean Penn stood on the wings of a plane flying over an active volcano in Walter Mitty. I watched Salvador starring James Woods and admired his (and the reporters his character was based on) sang froid in dealing with the despots and machine gun toting death squads. But I really don't want to end up raped, shot and buried in a shallow grave beside a lost highway. I'm not that brave. But I feel a tug when I watch docs with reporters going to war torn countries and disaster areas. They are the fourth estate, they are history's witnesses. Every writer I've ever really loved had been a reporter sometime in their career. Sometimes I feel I've cheated myself by not being one of them. I find enormous satisfaction in what I do, and how I help people. But my punk side, my loyal dissident side, my truth telling hall moniter tattle tale self wonders what I might have been if I'd pushed getting into journalism. I had my reasons for not doing it in 2006, but they seem awful hazy about now.
Well, never say die, right?
You can step out whenever you want. You just have to decide what you want to give up. You can walk off that plank leaving all your comforts and emotional ties behind. Swim with the sharks and hopefully live to tell the tale.
ReplyDeleteBut don't think because there are no bullets flying or helpless ones being defended in your current life that you are not making changes.
Every word you speak to others, every person you touch, see or pass by is effected by you, your words, your thoughts, your energy.
Being in the line of fire may get you a Pulitzer, but who does that effect? The eggheads just about now the only ones who read that type of journalism? The Bilderbergers who are orchestrating those atrocities? Bill Maher?
Or are touching lives in your circle who then touch others who raise their children with a little more love, a little more thought, a little more spirit...that changes the world.
The upshot? You are the change you want to see in the world. No matter where you are or what you do.
Remember... no matter where you go, there you are.