When You Get There...
Tonight we ate at the Asian Cajun Bistro in the Quarter, where our friend Amanda sings and plays piano. I had heard her play, but I didn't know she sang so well, a real blues-y sound. When we got back, we cracked a bottle of wine and watched a movie. Mike turned on the TV and we caught the repeat of the Anderson Cooper special on Angelina Jolie. He remarked that it was surprising; you could obviously tell she was smart from the way she spoke in the interview. Like it's always a pleasant surprise when someone in Hollywood is smart. I guess this is how we're conditioned to think. I think I've sobered up just watching this interview on TV, actually.
The thing I don't know if I told a lot of people is that last summer, before Mike and I got together, I was preparing a Peace Corps application for this year. There is so much I want to see and do. But two years on the other side of the world is a long time when you're with someone, and I doubt I will go now. I was really close to going abroad to Kenya during college, and the fact that I didn't has been one of my regrets... There is just so much of nature and the outdoors and being real that I want to experience.
The upshot of all this is that, out of nowhere, I get angry. Here the cameras are in a refugee camp in the Congo. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people raped, mutilated, and starving, camping in squalor and dying of AIDS. It hits me that all these displaced Katrina people in American cities need to shut the fuck up. No, that's rude. No, well, I changed my mind, screw that. Shut up anyway. You are not a refugee. Do not even try to claim that word. If you are in America, you need to seriously consider how lucky you are. I am aware that statistically we do not, as a nation, measure up to be as wonderful as we consider ourselves. I am also aware that people lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. I was one of the luckier ones, and it was still a huge, huge blow to my life. But there is a limit to how long one can grovel, and wallow, and sometimes the greater fact of that hits me hard. Still feeling bad about your house or your FEMA money? I'm telling you, watch some footage of some real refugees. Do not even get me started on the people who are like, "The government needs to bring us home! They won't let us go home!" No. Just no. Men with machine guns who will chop the arms off your children? THAT is "not letting us go home."
So if Angelina Jolie wants to travel around Africa and adopt kids, I say more power to her. More power to people who are willing to open their eyes and see these wild discrepancies between being spoiled and being human. Who am I to be angry? I don't do anything. And that makes me angry too. God, I am a liberal person. What has happened to my personal politics lately? Have I seen too much? Worse, do I look at Africa and romanticize it, neglecting the poverty and despair for the romanticism-- or dare I even say the vestiges of colonialism-- of a faraway place that has a more fanciful pull? They say you need to start where you are. Maybe the idea of that is too exhausting. Maybe I've been hearing sound bites from too many idiots. But you watch footage of an amputee refugee camp and tell me what you think about your expensive rent-- or whatever-- then.
I don't know. Have I helped Mike split two bottles of wine tonight? (I suspect I still did not manage to consume a whole bottle by myself). Yes. Yes, I have. I guess I'm rambling. So what do I know? I am only 25 years old and I do not know much, but I know when to be ashamed.
"Oh, when you get there, is there a there there?
Do people care there, are people aware there?
Do the boys and girls do more
Than break their toys and perm their hair there?
Send an update, Kate, to your old roommate
From your big round world to my small flat state
Tell me, what do you find when you open
Your eyes and your mind to the great out there?"
- Susan Werner
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