I Heard Someone Cry

I HEARD SOMEONE CRY
7/15/05

I am never too distraught when it comes to someone’s death from war especially people I never knew. I’ve never been very good at suffering through funerals. I have seen death in many faces and have escaped from it several times, but I have never welcomed it. I have never been obsessed by death or summoned its presence for myself or anyone else.

I have never considered my death as a means of protest. I have always valued my life highly and the lives of others. Here in Connecticut, the capital city of Hartford has had 14 murders so far this year. All from gang related shootings and drivebys. I have not attended one of the funerals nor have I sent a sympathy card to the parents of the children murdered. I did not know them. I do not live in Hartford, I seldom ever visit Hartford, but I often think of Hartford at least 14 times this year alone when each murder was reported in the news. Each time I shook my head in disbelief and ask myself what is going on and why can’t the police stop these murders? Why can’t someone stop these murders and suicide bombings and wars? Then I realize they cannot be stopped, they must continue it is the way of this world, murder and mayhem disease and devastation, poverty, famine, genocide, injustice, sorrow and pain. They are the way of this world and a part of the human experience.

I must visit Hartford if I wish to understand what is happening there. I must visit Iraq and Palestine and Darfur and the Congo and all places where death stalks those who live there. But I dare not now for I am very busy. I am so busy being busy at busy things that I will probably never get a chance to visit these places. Maybe I will send a card to all these victims’ families. But if I did that I would have to send millions of cards at least thousands each day. That would be far too expensive and time consuming a task for one man to undertake alone. So I have decided to shake my head and say why can’t someone stop the killings in Hartford, Iraq and Palestine, Darfur and the Congo. Why can’t someone stop these killings? I cannot stop them, I do not know how to, maybe no one does and that is why it continues. I can think of no way to stop or prevent these killings unless those who are doing the killing no longer have a reason to kill or have all been killed themselves. The solution is in the eternal circle but someone must break the line, step outside the circle’s barrier, to end the circle of violence and murder, and create for all a new line to follow upward and outward towards infinity forever embracing peace, love and the onward ascent of mankind towards the purest enlightenment.

L.A. STEEL