violence

I really don't deal very well with violence. I went to this movie last fall with a group of friends, and I came out shaken and drained. "Why would such violence be entertainment?" I asked. I couldn't sleep that night. I do fine, though, with real photos of an actual murder scene. I can look at real autopsy photos, even of babies.

I do not do fine with the violence of the war in Liberia. I used to. I used to read every book, watch every tv show, while the war was still ongoing. But lately, I have watched a couple of videos of Liberia that included footage from the war, and I can hardly make it through them. I watch them - how can I not? they are of Liberia, oh Liberia - but it takes me weeks, sometimes, to watch a twenty minute video in thirty second intervals.

It's different, somehow, here, to see an individual person making a choice, however tragic, to kill another person. To see little kids, probably high on drugs, shooting indiscriminately in Monrovia, all those years ago, is a completely different thing. And maybe that's it: I can interact with people, on both sides of violence, as individuals, but I cannot deal with the anonymous violence or the entertainment violence.

One might wonder - and I have - whether it is Liberia and Rwanda that have given me this abhorrence for violence, or whether the fact that I keep ending up in pre-, current and post-conflict zones is just some awful joke the universe is playing on me.