Subject: Re: So long (and thank for all the ...) fishers
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Thu Sep 20 2001 - 02:52:10 GMT
'... assumed that it was just me and Scotty going another round,
just as we have done before ...'
This was my assumption too, Zazie. And, just as in the past
whenever any unpleasantness broke out, I assumed *I* was
the bad guy. I guess on this occasion we must assume the real
bad guy is sitting in some anonymous leafy suburb of Kabul.
There's a great deal of spurious, as well as ambivalent, emotion
being expressed by outsiders at present. What it has taken me
some time to grasp is just what a STRANGE as well as shocking
an experience this has been for Americans. Yet I should have
remembered the blind demand for blood that *we* all felt when
the city of Coventry, one of the early victims of the blitz, was
more or less destroyed in one night. Not to mention the effect
after hearing of friends of friends blinded & burned in Omagh -
'just down the road' - only a couple of years ago. As Europeans,
it's a much more intrinsic part of our 'race memory'. (OK,
a ridiculous phrase, but you know what I mean.)
I suspect even Oklahoma City wasn't quite in the present
category. It could be presented as the act of some pathetic
deviant. But quite apart from the enormous difference of scale,
for Americans, the destruction of the WTC was the first great
intrusion of 'foreign' hatred into the home territory. And that
has always released some strange beasts inside all of us. It's what,
perhaps, explains why you & I - personally untouched by this
particular event (but how long before we receive our own version?)
- have been a little baffled by the unexpected response to what
we both seem to have felt was no more than some enjoyable,
mutual biffing.
What do you mean by your subject heading? I certainly hope
you're not about to depart. That would seem to me as deplorable
& unnecessary as anyone else's withdrawal. We don't need silence.
We need talk. Intercourse - in all its senses.
Scottie B.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Nov 12 2001 - 17:21:40 GMT