It was a pleasantly dull morning at work, and I was doing my best to keep myself feeling alive while people blasted away on their heavy metal riffage, never letting their fingers stop for one second trying to out do the other player in the other aisle. So strange, guitar playing in 2011, so strange, dull, loud and competitive. What are people trying to say? What do they not wish to hear? Why so many notes?
Out of the corner of my eye I caught 2 folks about my parents age. The man looked oddly like a biker, but not really a convincing one. Large, round with a handlebar moustache, and dressed like someone trying to fit in. The woman looked more comfortable to be herself, so she didn't strike me as odd. Something told me they were foreigners, retired and enjoying the American experience. When I finally heard them speak, it was a language I never heard. She came up to the counter and bought 2 cases of strings, probably expensive where they are from, a total of 24 sets. I asked her where they were from and she said "Norway". I said "I've not been yet, been to Finland and Sweden but only saw Norway from the boat."
Just a few days prior, Norway experienced that horrific tragedy. A rightist lunatic murders over 80 people in the name of preserving his country. I felt raw from just reading about it. I said to her, nervously, "I'm so sorry about what happened in your country". She said "thanks, it is impossible to even understand what happened." She had tears forming and so did I. It's not something I wish to do at work, cry that is, though I wish we were all free to do so. But I'm glad I got to share this tiny warm moment with her, this tiny connection in a world of division.
At this point the husband bought something too. His manner was gruff (i established their marital status cause they had the same last name on their separate credit cards!) and rather cold, comically cold actually, like my favorite grumpy ass characters. I couldn't help but chuckle inside it his manner and his dress. He was wearing blue jeans, motorcycle boots, a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off that said something about Baltimore and had a big ol' crab on it, and to top it off, a baseball cap with a confederate flag and on the back it says "rebel". I wondered if he indeed understood the meaning of that hat. The energy behind that symbol. The squareness of it all. I had a customer in Portland who wore an iron cross and I missed the opportunity to ask what I always wanted to: "so, like, are you into Hitler?" He clearly wasn't and he clearly had this symbol mixed with other medals he liked to wear such as his Woody Woodpecker medal. I wondered if anyone will ask this Norwegian man, who just experienced such a loss in his land "so, are you like into slavery?" It's strange. To wear such symbols is to declare "I'm really square and proud of it!" I have the same feeling when I see a Mao Tse Tung bag or t-shirt, and yes, I have seen that. "are you like, into mass murder?"
All this declaring and comparing, it's so dull. Division and more division, the need to be right all the time. Square as can be. I asked my Granmother and her Boyfriend the other day "if we didn't have robbers, would we need cops? and if we didn't have cops, would we need robbers?" I see little difference these days, just more humans trying to solve problems by dividing themselves more and more. It's insanity. I can remember a time when my father took me to a cubscout meeting. I remember walking it and feeling queasy immediately (same feeling as I got from church, creepy!) and seeing my peers in little uniforms, knives and award for some stuff I wasn't interested in, I left very quickly. My gut feeling was this is a dangerous situation. I don't think I was an exceptional child, I just had those feelings intact. Say you are in the woods and you come across a rattle snake (this happened to me when I was 13!) what does one do? A deer or rabbit would move away, quickly. It's a simple, natural reaction right? It's mere intelligence to move away from a snake or bear or lion. You see a shark you get out of the water right? Animals don't inflict nearly as much death in this world as allegiance does. Why do we continually move towards race, religion, nationality, political alliance, gangs, etc when these are clearly more deadly situations than that stroll through the woods. Why do we need to continually divide ourselves? I feel we have evolved past this point, and we can do much better. We are enormously intelligent beings, it's our choices that remain stupid. Insanity lies in doing the same stuff over and over and over again and expecting a different result. I don't think a hamster is insane, she just needs to get exercise on that wheel in her cage. We don't need a wheel cause there is no real cage.
Back to my Norwegian customer, I wonder what he was thinking wearing that hat. Was he merely trying to fit in? Fit in with whom? Americans? Whether he is into the ideologies of the pre war south, that wasn't his war. All of it is really baffling. To see so much death and destruction in the name of preservation, it simply doesn't make sense just like his wife said. And until we let all this symbol worship go, we'll keep going around and around that wheel of madness. I know we are much better than this.
jb
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