the waste land (original) (raw)

First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string
With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note
With hurting love; the music that they wrote
Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing
Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing
For the dear instrument to bear. Devote
The bow to silks and honey. Be remote
A while from malice and from murdering.
But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate
In front of you and harmony behind.
Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.
Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late
For having first to civilize a space
Wherein to play your violin with grace.

–Gwendolyn Brooks, 1949

this poem showed up on my AP english exam in the spring of 2001. i loved it so much i sat there after i'd written my essay and committed it to memory so i could write it down later. (yeah, i'm kind of like rain man sometimes, not the point, lol). i wrote it out that night in my journal and would go back to it fairly often. it moved me; i was continuously struck by the quiet fierceness in it.

september 11 happened during my first week of classes at mount holyoke. i said this on twitter this morning, i'll say it more expansively here. my mom has often said she will never forget exactly where she was when she'd heard JFK had been killed-- i know for the rest of my life i will have a vivid memory of standing in the kitchen of my dorm, dressed for dish duty, listening to an old mix tape on the little radio when the cook ran in frantic. "turn on the radio," she said, "a plane just flew into the world trade center." i don't think of this every day, or even every week. but writing it right now i'm choked up, actually close to tears.

i didn't cry that day, or at least i don't remember doing so. i was too scared. i have family that lives and works in the city. my uncle got out of the second tower fifteen minutes before he collapsed. i found out later he'd called my aunt from inside, while he was stuck in a stairwell with hundreds of other people trying to get out. he said he might not be coming home. i can't imagine what it must have been like to get that phone call-- i heard him tell the story months later, i hadn't even known it was that close until then. i don't think he wanted us to know. my roommate also was from long island, her best friend was at MHC as well. the three of us spent the entire day switching off on my roommate's computer (neither of the other 2 of us had our comps yet) signing into aim, IMing family, asking if there was news. there wasn't any, not until later at night. we crowded into the dorm common room to watch the tv; i'll never forget the clips they showed on repeat, the plane flying into the first tower, the first tower collapsing, then the second. when we left the tv and went back to our rooms we had the radio on from time to time, but after a while it was too hard to listen and not see, too hard to see and not know.

it was that, i think, that hit me hardest. the not knowing-- beyond the simple desperation to know if our families were alive, we-- all of us, everyone i spoke to, from my mother to my roommate to the cook-- were full of anger, burning to know who had done this to us, and more importantly, why.

we have answers to those questions now. i don't know if i'll ever shake the feelings of doubt, guilt and frustration they left me with. it's been eight years and i still get angry-- not only at the people who enacted this horrible vengeance and forced us all to pay the price for america's perceived wrongs-- but at the knowledge that those wrongs are not entirely imagined, that we are, in many ways, the self-entitled greedy careless nation that extremists believe us to be. that we could be doing better. and we're trying-- i'll give us that. we're definitely working at it. but i get even angrier at the knowledge that this attack only strengthened the resolve of so many people to see america put its foot down and say this is what we are and we're never going to change. i'm against war on principle. but even if i weren't, i don't think the past seven years of bloodshed were the right response to what happened on 9/11. i actually can't think of any situation where the past seven years would be an appropriate response. brooks's sonnet is about fighting for peace, sure, but it's about finding your *own* civilized space, kicking ass so you can do what you love and live without fear. it's not about starting a war because you're furious that someone kicked sand in your face, and it's definitely not about staying in a war you can't win and shouldn't even be waging in the first place.

in december of 2002 i sat in the movie theater across the street from mount holyoke at midnight to see the opening of 'the two towers'. i don't think i was the only one in the theater who had a different set of towers on her mind. i remember being struck right through the heart near the end of the movie when theoden turns to aragorn and helplessly asks, "what can men do against such reckless hate?" i still don't know. i don't know what to do, and it scares me to admit that. i don't know what anyone can *do* that they shouldn't already be doing in the name of becoming more consicous and responsible citizens of the world.

i haven't yet read art spiegelman's book "in the shadow of no towers", but from the first time i heard the title it stuck with me. i didn't lose anyone on 9/11. i don't even know anyone except in passing who did. but i still feel that way sometimes, like i'm living in that empty space of doubt and dread and terror. it's not every day. but it's often enough that when the anniversary comes around i still find myself rocked with grief and asking some hard questions i still don't have answers to, and i don't know if i ever will.

if you lost someone on september 11th, or if you've lost someone in the war, or if you're just someone like me who experienced that day as a reminder of everything you stand to lose-- my heart goes out to you.