In the middle of the night
Caleb and I are up at random hours of the night, so I’ve caught bits and pieces of all kinds of cable.
Eighties movies—Flashdance, Airplane, Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, The Lost Boys (like nine times I’ve watched The Lost Boys at three a.m.), Pretty in Pink (Dear Duckie, I love you) and The Goonies (Christopher and I play a drinking game to this movie: you chose one character, and recite their dialogue AT THE SAME TIME THEY DO for the entire film. Every time you screw up or miss something, you take a drink. Every time you get it right, the other person takes a drink. This works well if you chose secondary or tertiary characters [Chunk and Sloth are the favorites, naturally], but gets sloppy pretty fast if you pick Mikey or Bran [although who can resist the DOWN HERE IT’S OUR TIME IT’S OUR TIME DOWN HERE speech?]).
Infomercials—ShamWOW!
Soap operas—Luke and Laura are STILL ALIVE? How can they even justify that? Is it like Menudo, where the guys can retire and be replaced by new fresh-faced young things, thus deceiving the public that Menudo never ages, that their music is the sound of eternal youth were etermal youth to have a sound?
Charmed—it’s comforting that at any time of day, I can see Alyssa Milano’s hipbones.
Law and Order—Law and Order is on 24 hours a day. You know that super-dramatic two-note transition theme they’ve got? DUM DUM! I hear that in my SLEEP.
Last night, though, I watched something truly amazing: this HBO documentary on the Beslan Elementary School seige. I started it with Caleb, and then stayed up to finish once he fell back asleep (which is really saying something, people, ‘cause these days there’s not so much of the sleep in my house, so to give it up voluntarily is the biggest of deals).
Do any of you remember the Beslan school siege? A group of Chechan terrorists took more than a thousand little kids hostage in September 2004, holding them for three days before Russian forces stormed the school. Christopher and I lived in Prague during ’04 and this event received 24-hour nonstop coverage from the entire international news media, including the BBC and CNN International–
Sidebar: in case you didn’t know, CNN International and the CNN you watch are very, very different. As is Newsweek and Newsweek International, MSNBC and MSNBC International, etc. For example, in the months leading up to the U.S. election in ’04, all the media I watched and/or read (and not just Liberal sources, FYI. This is International sources I’m talking about, period) was so fervently anti-Bush that I didn’t think there was a chance he’d win. I can’t even explain the shock … it made me realize just how powerful the media really is. Our Czech friends asked, “How could America do this when the world is so against him?” and it’s like, how do you even answer such a question? Whatever, I’m not talking about Bush here (Dear Obama: Hi! Hi! Hi!), I’m talking about International media. Christopher and I sat in front of our TV for three whole days, watching breathless as the Russian government deliberted and the eventual, horrible climax of hundreds of children running to safety in their underwear, and at one point I called my mom back in Michigan. “Are you watching CNN?” I asked, trying to get a hold of my words ‘cause I was crying so hard. She turned it on and said, “Bill Clinton’s book was just released and they’re interviewing him.” That’s when I realized that there were things going on all over the world that I wouldn’t ever know about. God. That sounds so naïve, doesn’t it? And it’s like, D'UH. OF COURSE I KNEW THAT, theoretically, but theory and practice are two very different things. Exhibit A: having a baby. Exhibit B: writing fiction. Exhibit C: the media.
What I’m saying here is, I remember the Beslan siege as one of THOSE events, like September 11th, the Challenger explosion, when the US first bombed Iraq—like my parents remember the Kennedy assassination, maybe. I know where I was and what I was doing. I didn’t move from the television. I cried and hugged my friends and had this overwhelming appreciation for life and love and the air in my lungs and the color of flowers and the cobblestone underneath my shoes and my shoes and my feet in my shoes and the wonderful gift I had in enjoying these things for even one day more. Someday, when Caleb studies history in school, I'll tell him about my experience of THOSE events.
Flash forward to last night, me on my couch, watching this documentary where they interview the kids—some of the lucky ones who made it out of the siege alive. The kids take the cameras around the school—empty, blackened, untouched for four years—and point: this is where they held us. This is where they shot my mother. This is where we drank pee ‘cause there was no water, and it was so hot, and so many bodies crammed together, and everyone was scared. To hear these stories coming from children is the very definition of horrible; yet, at the same time, they’re so strong, those kids. Resilient. They’re still alive. One of them talked about how sad her little town was now. Everyone wears black, there’s no dancing, no laughing, and she wants to grow up so she can leave and find a place where it’s okay to be happy again.
Had I watched this documentary a year ago, I would’ve been affected in a very different way. I’d still be horrified, for sure, but I probably would’ve been focused on the film itself—how a piece of art is so potent; it’s a reminder of an event that the greater world can easily forget. How three years after the fact, such art is necessary to keep these events in the forefront of our minds so, hopefully, we can continue to dialogue about how such things can be avoided in the future. Or—and I’m thinking about Hurricane Katrina now—how the art can remind us that there’s still work to be done, to repair lives and communities. We need the art because the media moves on to other things.
But watching it now? When I have a little kid? After turning off the TV and going back to bed, and there he is next to me in the bassinet, breathing heavy and healthy and safe? I want to shake the walls, people.
Everything is different now: eating, sleeping, watching the news, walking my dog in my neighborhood, appreciating a piece of art, voting, writing, deciding what to write about, deciding what I’m willing to fight for—what battles I’ll chose, what dragons I’ll slay. What dragons I CAN slay.