Weather for Headphones

In my autobiography class, we have been reading the journal of Etty Hillesum. She was an incredibly intelligent, philosophical young woman living during the Holocaust. She died at Auschwitz before she was 30, but her letters and journal were collected, translated, and published by relatives.

I think that, amidst all the talk of numbers and statistics, of millions and millions dead, of remembering and never forgetting the Holocaust, we overlook the fact that, of the 11 million lives lost, every single one was a unique and valuable human individual. These people were not defined by the fact that they died in a war. Long before the war even began, they had their own loves, families, lives, and careers. They thought and breathed and broke bread together and they felt.

Etty was not perfect- she was far from it. She had moments when she gave in to hatred, and she cursed the Germans and wanted every German person to die. But she knew that, deep inside, if even one German person was good, then it was wrong to call them all evil. She believed in the power of hope and the goodness in all of us- one of the last things she left for this world was the message that “we should be willing to act as balm for all wounds.”

I want to be someone who does this. I want to leave my mark on the world- one that lasts and heals. The question is, how? We were all gifted with certain talents, certain advantages and disadvantages that let us see the world in different ways. Some of us write, or sing, or play sports. Some people haven’t discovered their talents yet, but they are there.

We were given these gifts for a reason- to use them. To let talent die and wither away is like cutting off an arm or a leg- it’s just plain wrong. Etty had a talent- her bright and beautiful mind. Somewhere deep inside, she knew that she only had so long to live on this earth, and she knew she had to continue writing. We don’t know when we could die, so we have to try our hardest to leave an impression on others every day.

I think everyone needs to feel that they are beautiful. At the very least, that they are not ugly, and there isn’t anything wrong with them.

I think that a lot of people don’t feel that way these days.

are you going
to ask me
how i feel? or
will you sit
and stare, without
words, without me?

Okay, here’s a really crazy idea.

The other day, I went to my school’s performance of The Vagina Monologues. There is this one part, about halfway through, when the cast begins chanting the word “cunt”. “Cunt” is a terrible insult to womanhood. It even has an ugly sound, beginning and ending with a hard consonant. For a feminist and writer like myself, it is twice as uncomfortable to hear. However, words only have power if we give them power. There is this quote:

“Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?” I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there’s another kike— that’s two kikes and three niggers. And there’s a spic. Right? Hmm? There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ’til nigger didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.”

–Lenny Bruce

Why are slurs, insults, and curses so powerful? There are several reasons:

1. Historical basis – obviously there is some historical baggage carried with such words.
2. Sexual or physical – 95% of curse words are a) sexual in nature or b) degrading some bodily function or body part. They exploit our own insecurities about ourselves- our sexuality, our “size”, even our bowels.
3 (THE MOST IMPORTANT PART). Rarity – You never hear these words. This is because we have unconciously accepted that these words are meant for a specific purpose- to hurt others. If we called roses “shitfucks”, then “shitfucks” wouldnt be a bad word anymore.

So what happens if you get an organized group of people who start to use these words on a daily basis, in non-traditional contexts, with completely different definitions? In the classroom? (Very loudly) In public? In a movie theater? A restaurant? What if you use them so much that, although the history and the insecurity remains, other positive or neutral meanings become attached to them? Will these words even matter anymore?

I felt like the original version was incomplete. I like it better now.

i had a riot for breakfast-
doused the flames in maple,
scratched butter ditches in the
brown. I love mornings when

your eyes open extra wide, like
snowflakes out the door
catching your tongue, melting into
cars, each leading to another
adventure. It’s like

when you ask if we
are going to live
today, instead of dying. I
don’t have any answers, but

your smile covers me up
and down, down, down.
Like cars falling
into water. We’re alive.