Starving and sick, the enemy shivered. Connor sat and pulled the dying man’s head into his lap. “Remember, the man who’s trying to kill you is a human being too,” his mom had said. There in the jungle dusk, he held the soldier until his breathing stopped. He walked on, leaving the jungle to consume the remains. He heard his rifle clips clattering. Gotta stop that noise. That was his last thought before he collapsed, curling up and shivering. Must be losing my mind.Is this what it feels like to die? He closed his eyes and drifted off.
During the War that broke apart Yugoslavia, I saw on TV a boy, twelve-years-old I think, carrying a Kalashnikov and vowing revenge for the murder of his brother. I don’t remember which combatant group he claimed. It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the endless cycle of revenge that began with that war.
It tell this story, because Branislav Bojcic’s book, I hate my brother: the story about love and hate, reveals the traumas that can cause that thirst for revenge and the devastation that follows. In this individual story about one man, his family, and his friend, he has encapsulated a cycle of love and hatred that plays itself out all over the world every day. He says he had to leave his country because of the book, and I believe him. The people of the resulting divided countries, especially the leadership that precipitated the savagery, don’t want the details broadcast.
I draw readers’ attention, however, to the book’s subtitle: “The Story About Love and Hate.” It brings up yet again the vital connection between love and hate and the possibility of redemption.
Last week, I wrote about my friend Majda coming here to the U.S. As I’ve thought about her, I’ve wondered how our lack of civility here in America must frighten her. She saw this kind of tribalism tear her country apart. Her husband, who died during the war, reported on Yugoslavia’s breakup. She reported on the refugees. She knows about the death camps and the rape camps and the depths of human brutality.
How must she have cringed during the 2016 election when she heard the chants, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” She must be terrified by armed people on statehouse steps screaming, “Liberate Minnesota! Liberate Michigan! Liberate Virginia!” while people die.
Majda did something she was sure she’d never do. She met a man she loves and she’s remarried. Moved halfway across the continent and we’ve lost touch, but I can’t help thinking about her and her daughters.
Her youngest daughter—after the war—went back to Bosnia during summer breaks from college and gathered up the children. She taught them mediation, how to get along even if you have different beliefs. I wonder if she’s working in America now along with the other mediators I know.
Majda Obradovic thought she had left the craziness behind when she escaped Bosnia with only her daughters and her life—and some engraved shell casings. I’d realized before how people make beautiful things out of horrors—my dad had a coffee table made of military brass from the Korean Conflict. I don’t know the calibers of Majda’s shell casings, but I’m in awe of the engravings. Around the base of each casing were fleur de leis, and on the largest, central Sarajevo with its mosque, its synagogue, and its temple, and all the people on the promenade walking together.
I’m afraid my recording this time is a bit on the weird side, sound-wise. It’s allergy season, my grandson loves to play outside (as does his grandmother), and this one seems especially virulent. Here’s my Carrot Ranch Literary Community 99-word story.
Pizza came to Nebraska in the early 60s. It arrived in a box. Back then, a pizza party did not involve take out or delivery, or even popping a frozen treat in the oven. We mixed the dough, according to directions, inhaling the yeasty aroma. We tried tossing it on our fingers, then we gathered up the mess and pressed it into a pan, crimped the edges and spread the tomato sauce around. Then we scattered cheese over the top. Sometimes I make pizza, but not the bare bones concoctions we giggled over. Nor is it as much fun.
Late again, but here’s my attempt to meet this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community’s blog challenge. It involved writing about someone taking charge. As usual, I was to do it in 99 words, no more, no less.
Sometimes it’s just the little things people remember
You wouldn’t call her meek, but Hazel avoided confrontation when she could. Standing on the doorstep of the home place, though, an old neighbor told of a time when she didn’t.
“I was helpin’ out at your place at dinnertime. Dad had said I wasn’t to eat there, but she sat me down at the table. Well, here comes Pop, rarin’ mad. Hazel met him on the step. Told him, ‘On this place, if he works, he eats.’
“Now Pop was used to getting’ his way, but he shut up and waited for me to finish Hazel’s apple pie.”
Here’s Hazel in 1995, not too long before her 99th birthday.
Trees that walk and talk and fight in a battle between good and evil
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, trees walk and
talk and take part in a war between good and evil. In the book, they constitute
a separate race of sentient beings called Ents. Little did Tolkien know, from his
perspective in the middle of a great world-wide depression, how close he was to
the reality of trees.
Now we know that trees communicate and take part in
skirmishes. Although individual trees don’t walk, as species they move. Right
now they are migrating northward.
As to the skirmishes, imagine this cooperation in a battle
to the death. Your gigantic American elm tree comes under attack by leaf-eating
caterpillars. How does it defend itself? It releases pheromones to attract
parasitic wasps. What about the pine tree next door? It detects the elm’s pheromones
and produces some of its own—and here come the wasps.
You go into the shelterbelt, find a convenient ash or elm
where you can settle your back against the trunk. Does that feeling of euphoria
come from the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze, from your cool escape
from the sun, or maybe from the tree’s pheromones?
A woman in Australia, Monica Gagliano, has evidence that
some plants emit a “crackling noise” in the roots at 220 hertz. We can’t hear
it, but maybe trees can. What are they talking about underground? I’ve written
before about trees communicating and cooperating underground where they share
water and nutrients over a complex network of interconnected roots and micro-fungi.
It appears to be a supportive system that nurtures all its members over acres
and acres of trees, especially the young ones.
While individual trees planted in isolation may not get lonely, their chances of survival diminish with solitude. And how about us? As we clear-cut stand after stand of trees to feed our hunger for everything from new houses to paper, where will we go to lean against a tree trunk and contemplate nirvana?
Trees even communicate and support one another among species. I like to think all of Spearfish Canyon is one network of interacting trees.
I had a friend—a gnome-like fellow who said he’d thought,
when he was a child, that every six-year-old spent a year in an iron lung. He
was a canny bulldog in local politics, supporting rights for people with
disabilities. There’s the time he argued for wheelchair ramps at the
courthouse.
“We’ll help them up the stairs,” said the councilmen.
“Look,” said Roger, “someday you may have an accident. Maybe
you’ll need a wheelchair. Then, how would you like to sit at the bottom of
those stairs out there waiting for someone to notice you?”
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