Who are you people who can orchestrate genocide? Who are you? What is in your head and your hearts and your hands that you are blind to the humanity in every pair of eyes that looks at you? EVERY PAIR OF EYES, not just the eyes of your countrymen or your family or your friends. There is humanity in every pair of eyes that looks at you.
Who are you that you would do this? This is not a crime of passion, this is not one person losing it. This is meticulous and planned and executed all with precision. Who are you people who pulled the triggers? Who are you people who complacently pulled the trigger time and time again? Did you ever question what was happening? Did you ever say “I do not like muslims but I see their humanity in their eyes”?
What kind of person orchestrates a genocide? I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. I don’t even want to understand genocide or where it comes from. I don’t want to believe that one group of humans would do this to another.
I don’t want to lose my faith in humanity. Ever. I rarely lock my front door. Quite often I leave my purse unsecured. These things are foolish and people point them out to me but I have no worries. If someone wants to steal from me then I hope that what they take helps them. I see no group of bad people, only individual circumstances. I have faith in humanity.
But it is slipping.
Who are you people on this earth with the rest of us that would take life so viciously based on the most specious of reasoning? Who the fuck are you and what is wrong with you?
I have lost faith, however, in the United Nations. Just one year, ONE YEAR after the Rwandan tragedy the U.N. did the same thing in Srebrenica.
Today Kofi Annan called this a great shame. No, Kofi, the great shame is Darfur. The great shame is that as you stand there and apologize to the widows and the mothers and the daughters and the sister, as you speak these words they are hollow ringing with the echo of your inaction in Darfur.
I’m a foolish girl, in my heart I believe that these acts are individual acts, that they are the acts of a visual minority. I believe that if you sampled the hearts and heads and hands of the majority of people on this earth you would not find this atrocity. I’m foolish, i’ll always believe that people if not inherently good are at least inherently neutral.
And every time I cry on the way to work as I listen to these reports and every time I give money because I am helpless and unskilled in any better way to help, I wonder if I am wrong.

I got a micrometer today. I don’t know what to measure with it yet. I can measure paper and a post it note is 4.95 micrometers thick. My hair is exactly 2 microns thick.
I had a dream that I went to dog obedience summer camp in cambodia during the vietnam war. The war was coming to an end, the camp couselors knew we would have to leave early, so they decided to give us a special trip to phnom penh. When I got to the city with my group (we flew, it sucked, i hate flying low over the jungle when there’s a war on) we decided to meet at the german restaurant in the middle of town. I had a wad of american dollars I wanted exchanged into baht (i’ve since discovered that the unit of currency in cambodia is the riel, i knew the baht was thai, but in my dream i could only work with what I knew). Of course, the first place I went to exchange my money was the flashy new Target store on the outskirts of phnom penh. The lady behind the counter had to consult her binders to see who would back the american dollar. I tried to explain that america itself would back it’s own money, but it was all very bureaucratic, she had to look it up. When I got my money I wandered into the bathroom and was surprised to see families having picnics in the bathroom. I chose a stall and the door was not full size and you could see me sitting there. As I finished up my business (it stayed in my dream, I didn’t pee the bed) I realized that the bathroom opened completely into the Target cafeteria and that was why people were picnicking in the bathroom AND the people in the cafeteria could see me.
Dammit.
I hope someone in the dream target cafeteria was eating a pretzel and got grossed out.
It’s official, my housewarming is 8/27. Who’s coming? There will be food and happiness and joy!
Okay, thanks for the emails and comments. The world will not end if I don’t do my dishes, the planet will not spin out of control or anything like that! Once I calmed myself, reminded myself that this is mine and I am beholden to no one, I actually managed to be productive. I did the dishes, all of the laundry, arranged my room, did all my filing and made a well balanced, tasty and nutritious dinner for David and I to eat at the freshly cleared table.
Nice
Where’s a good place to get cheap wine in minneapolis? or, barring that, who wants to go to chicago for an overnight?