November 6, 2004

45 days...

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.
- Robert Frost

i certainly won’t become more conservative as i get older. and i certainly was radical when young. i may now be more conservative than at 17, but better educated. i found a philosophical reason for “why are we here” so i no longer find anger to be of any value. and the entire punk rock scene can mostly be summed up by cake’s song, rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle: “you’re chaos won’t convert them. you never really hurt them.” so i don’t look the part anymore.

other than that i’m pretty much a radical. it’s all mental anyway. people don’t respond well to anger and safety pins and you can’t really help them when your angry. sometimes you can’t control the anger though, and then you don’t really help them.

i got into a bit of a disagreement with john, the concrete guy. it started with the election, then went to iraq, then to 9/11, then to the use of violence and it’s appropriateness — straight to the place deep within my heart, so dear and so painful. listening to other human beings talk of needing violence to resolve issues of anger. we’ve only had 45 days on this planet without armed conflict. in all of recorded history only forty-five days of true non-violence on the planet.

“what, don’t you care about your family?” he asked. YES! i respond. “what if somewhere to rape your daughter? you wouldn’t kill the guy?”

that’s always the argument, isn’t it? “if you don’t take that eye for the eye then you are a bad person. right along with all the other bad people.”

i care about my family enough not to make a stupid reactionary decision based in anger about someone else’s life. they want happiness as much as i do. as much as christina does. as much as daechen does. killing someone because they harmed you only hurts you more. hurting someone because they hurt you only causes you to suffer more. check up and see. it only takes a minute.

i told john we were done talking when, for the third time, he told me how sorry he was for my family. i got upset, i got angry about it. so now i feel like shit with this awful feeling. not only did i not convince john of non-violence, i let violence arise in me. i got upset. it leads people to kill other people. and we’ve gotta stop that cuz jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason for.

prine will be playing in missoula on the 16th. i will be there.

posted @ 5:16 PM

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