Memorial

This past week I've seen flower stands along Foster Road, selling cheap hothouse flowers dyed with chemicals and wrapped in non-recyclable plastic. This afternoon's traffic to the Willamette National Cemetery was backed up over 1/2 mile, spilling down 110th Avenue. As I made my way through it, heading home, I thought about my tradition of calling all veterans I know on 11/11, how I don't actually know anyone who died while in military service, how my father threw his purple heart into the ocean, his reasons complicated and intensely personal.

And then I thought of Utah Phillips (wiki link here), whose singing and storytelling touched me, and provided a common forum through which my father and I connected, he a veteran and his daughter a peacemonger. The 1996 album Utah Phillips produced with Ani Difranco, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, was tremendous and moving. Two tracks in particular, "Korea," followed by "Anarchy," brought tears to my eyes every time I heard them. I have many memories wrapped up in associations of this man, his cataclysmic force and sense of humor will remain in the threads woven through the past twelve years when I was first introduced to his stories and his music.

From "Korea":

I knew that it was all wrong, that it all had to change, and that change had to start with me.

From "Anarchy":

I learned in Korea that I would never again, in my life, abdicate to somebody else my right and my ability to decide who the enemy is.

. . . anarchy is not a noun but an adjective. It describes the tension between moral autonomy and political authority, especially in the area of combinations, whether they are voluntary or coercive. The most destructive coercive combinations are arrived at by force. As Ammon said, 'Force is the weapon of the weak.'

All these thoughts and memories and triggers inform me that now is the right time to publicly acknowledge my next project, to investigate and explore the Great Peace March of 1986. My fascination with the March, with Marchers' thoughts and stories twenty-two years later, with the meaning of Peace as a concept, a practice, a vision, a reality - these things will weave together the next creative phase.

What is peace? What is war? What is between the two? What else is on the spectrum? How do we choose to exist?

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