Peace?
Peace? What is peace? Peace is the silence between blows, a realization.
Life is violence.
I watch, silent, from my little precipice, staring at the swirling howl that is our world and I know that peace, like heaven, is the dream that will never awaken--the dream bred in the fog of ignorance. The heart is too strong, the conviction too great. Always there is another side. One who will not be silenced. How then can that great silence, peace, ever be attained? While life haunts this barren rock, peace will never reign.
Bathed in blood, we enter this world, and it's with blood on our hands that we live. From our very beginnings we have fought, bitterly... There is no right and wrong to it. Only opposition. As in all things, this constant collision, this encounter most savage, is the end and the beginning of all things. Perpetual motion takes us away from and towards the violence all at once.
The earth was wrought from violence as was all that man has attained. By violence, we gain our life. By violence, we keep our life. By violence, our life is taken from us.
Peace? What is peace? Peace is the distance between warriors, an empty road.
Life is violence.
I live in a relatively quiet place and I watch those who live in places more violent, and wonder, are they less fortunate? Are their lives less rich having knelt so near to death? Or do they taste something that only they can understand? Do they know something that no other would fathom? I am forced to thinking...
Would my life change at the sharp crack of automatic rifle shot, shell-casings ringing softly on cold stone? Would my eyes be opened by the crushing blast of explosives, tightly packed, in the back of a hatchback parked on the corner? Could I read the mysteries of life in the blood that runs amongst the cobblestones? Could I see reflections of the future in the flying shards of glass? Would the ripping sear of a bullet against my flesh clarify the clouded world around me? What answers would the violence bring?
I slumber in my belief that my children are safe as they spend their days. I hold them dear. But how much more dear are the children of those that shield them from stones, bottles and hatred, running haphazard, fearing always the worst yet hoping for the best? How much more feeling is pounding there? Do they wish to live as I do? Or should I wish to live as they? Is my happiness as great as theirs? Is my sadness? Over there, in little towns where violence is born, every day, screaming and hungry.
Peace? What is peace? Peace is the vacuum before an explosion, the echo of gunfire.
Life is violence.
What has peace given me? An absence of pain? Hardly. Life has been no more friendly to me than to those in any war-torn nation. Am I free of violence? Define violence. Life is violence. I am merely living in the flash before the impact. I am living just as they lived, before that moment occured, that violent moment, that made the circle complete and brought them back to the beginning, back to the end.
When will that moment find me? Today? Tomorrow? Would the knowledge make it more, or less, painful to bear? Will I emerge from the moment or be swallowed by it? What changes will be wrought? Changes? Yes, changes. Violence is the birth of change. Violence of thought. Violence of action. Violate. Rape. Emotional and physical assault. Sexuality is violence. Reproduction is violence. Life is violence. Innocence is destroyed. Virginity is consumed. Fertility yields to violence and life is born.
Peace? What is peace? Peace is the space between heartbeats, the exhale of death. Life is violence.
This snapshot existence is momentary. We are all bound in our pain. We are all united in our joy. We all live in this eerie space between moments, on the edge of catastrophe, oblivious to our impending oblivion, sharing this fragile dream we call peace. Peace? What is peace?
Posted:Thursday, August 29, 2002
