Snitching and Cassandra

Two years ago, June 5th, my friend Cassandra was murdered.

One night a "friend" of hers beat her to death with his bare hands. She lived in a neighborhood of apartments; buildings which were closely spaced. There must have been dozens of witnesses to her screams and no one called the police.

I've sometimes wondered how that could happen. How long does it take to beat someone to death? Her mother said she was completely unrecognizable, she only knew her by a mole on her neck.

How could people in the homes around her listen to her screams, her cries for help, and do nothing? The police did not know about her death until the perpetrator led them to her body.

So it's been on the news the last few days that 60 mins. did a report in which a rapper, Cameron, was interviewed about the anti-snitching culture. I didn't connect the two, foolishly, until I was almost asleep tonight. That's why Cassandra got no help that night. No one wanted to snitch, and my friend died for it.

You know what, it makes me really mad. And I hate to say this but it is something I absolutely cannot respect about any culture that subscribes to this. Thinking about it... before this realization I would not have really cared too much about the racial composition of a neighborhood I lived in. There are good and bad neighborhoods of every color, but now... now I don't think I could move into a black neighborhood. I would just be too scared that if someone were murdering me no one would help. I know that in every white neighborhood I've ever lived in, a woman's screams bring the police quite quickly.

So I feel bad for saying it, maybe it makes me racist, but it is the truth. I am having a child now and I could not, in good conscience, put that child or myself in a position to be completely devoid of help if we needed it. What is a community, what is a neighborhood, if you cannot even count on your neighbors for a simple thing like picking up a phone if you scream for help in the night?

AMA Halts Executions

This morning I was listening to the news on NPR and they mentioned a little something about the AMA issuing guidelines which would punish physicians who participate or oversee executions of convicted criminals on death row.

Now I'm pretty mixed on my opinions of capital punishment. While I don't particularly care for murder, even when state sanctioned, I also feel that there are some people who are just too dangerous to risk subjecting society to, and I feel that the burden of their life long imprisonment is perhaps hard to justify... so I'll just say I don't know how I stand on the issue.

But, having said that I will say I am wholly opposed to what the AMA is doing. In my opinion they are in effect using their power to license physicians to overrule the power and laws of the state, and I feel that this is a very dangerous precedent to set.

For no matter what your stance is on capital punishment, I think it is dangerous to allow the moral position of any group to dictate what doctors can do. What if the AMA became headed up by prolifers and withdrew the liscenses of doctors who provided abortion, or by strict catholics and punished drs. for prescribing birth control... or radical muslims and withdrew liscenses of male doctors who had female patients?

We may think that these things could not happen, and to be honest the only one that seems to be any real danger now is the abortion issue, since one could argue that since doctors are to preserve life that abortions are unethical (if fetuses are alive) but it is impossible to know what the future holds and how society will change in the years to come.

I think the population is about evenly split on the capital punishment thing, so this is not an overwhelming majority issue... niether is the prolife/prochoice debate.

The potential dangers of allowing any agency who is not accountable to the public (voters) for their actions to determine (effectively) what is done by the state is a danger to all of us.

I don't know what will happen with this, and haven't even been able to find anything about it on the web, but it is something that gave me pause and frightened me a little bit today.

Oh, and sorry I've not written in so long :)

Sadness

It is a terrible thing to see the end of something beautiful. To watch a beginning end, a potential being destroyed. Perhaps the destruction is not immediate. Perhaps it will not happen today, tomorrow or even next week but one of the tomorrows yet to come will bring agony, and sooner than I would have expected that pain to be borne.

There is no reason to go into specifics. No reason to linger upon the cause, it is there, it is unavoidable and perhaps it is my own fault for being who I am; feeling as I feel. I wish there was some way for me to be someone else for a while, to do the thing that seems easy and avoid a particular pain I see tumbling toward me. That easy, though, comes with its own pain, and perhaps, likely, a greater pain in the end. An unjustifiable pain that I realize to be so, an avoidable pain if I am strong enough to be true to myself and not give in to my desire to be someone else, the one he wishes I could be.

And upon thinking of this impending disaster, one that may only be averted through luck (of which I have none good), I wonder if it is better to lose someone who you love slowly or to have them wrenched quickly away. I don't want to lose this person; I have never loved as I love them. I will, though, it seems no matter what choice I make. For if even I were to be this other person I would not remain her forever, and if I did how can I think she would be someone they would care to know, that I would care to know either? For she would be a false being, an imitation of the real; all of us deserve better than an imitation.

and then again... even if mercy intervened... I now have knowledge I did not possess before. A little less innocence, a little less luster in my soul. And maybe there are many reasons for this but among them are the knowledge that I have trusted blindly, and beyond what I should have, that happiness is elusive and perhaps unattainable to one such as myself, that I am maybe not enough (not enough what I don't know) to have or keep the love of someone I love, that hope is perhaps a thing I should relinquish and instead grasp a reality, no matter how it breaks me apart.

Yes, this is a pity party, I hate having them. They are unproductive and useless in the end, but maybe I feel sorry enough for myself to indulge in this for a little while. In a series of disasters, spanning three decades and more, I have mostly denied myself this right... I have mostly seen myself as strong enough to not need such uselessness and resented the pity of anyone else. Now, though, I do not know how strong I am. I don't know if I can face this loss, this pain, this tragedy, with the tenacity I've always been known for. I don't know if I can pull up my bootstraps and get to work, or if there will be a silver lining somewhere in the distance.

I always have held on to the hope that one day things would work out for the best. That I would find happiness, a secure happiness, and live a life I could love. Right now I doubt that this is true. Right now I think that maybe I was just meant to be unhappy, to lose everything I ever care about, to be alone, to be unloved, to only have consolation from the art my sadness inspires.
People may not like to hear such things, but this is not an uncommon lot among artists. Many of us are consigned to hell for a life, creating joy for others out of a suffering and cruelty we cannot escape or overcome. And what scares me here is that this pity party is not depression induced, these are not the empty feelings of grayness and despair, but the hopeless meanderings of reality that will not allow me to ignore.

I thought, for a while, that luck had finally found me. Luck has deserted me once again, and I am even more miserable having finally tasted her. For I know what I am losing, what I will lose, and I know it is irreplaceable and a tragedy beyond recovery. I could never find something like this again, I think, for he is so perfectly made for me that no one else can compare to his fit in mind, in body and even in soul.

And maybe he does not want to leave, he says so, but that will not make a difference in the end. In the end I will be alone once more, more alone than I was ever before because he will take my heart when he walks away.