How do we not know how to do this yet?

Today, I had a driveway moments–a driveway moment is when you’re listening to NPR and you end up hanging out in the driveway because you can’t get out of the car until the current story’s over.

I was listening to this: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152922457/an-afghan-shoots-a-marine-dies-mistrust-grows

It’s about the number of our service-people who have been murdered by our Afghan friends–their Afghan police and military forces–this year.

Part of the reason I was struck is because it occurred to me that we just don’t know how to do this yet.

I mean, we’ve been at war for millions of years. Millions of years.

Yet we do not know how to cope with or conduct war. We do not know how to re-integrate our soldiers into society successfully. We do not know how to stem the tide of spousal abuse and suicide that follows their returns home. We do not know how to tell them to violate one of the commandments in one situation, but to follow the others at seemingly arbitrary times. We are only starting to understand what even happens with head injuries, even though we’ve been hitting each other over the head for millions of years.

We said for years that women couldn’t be in combat because our male soldiers would find it too difficult to not do everything–including jeopardizing missions–to protect them. But the reality is that our women find the most danger from their comrades–they are raped at an amazing rate, by the very men whom we think will sacrifice to protect them from the enemy.

Many years ago, I wrote a poem from Lady Macbeth’s point of view. I was interested in why we blame for her Macbeth’s actions, when he contemplates murder before he ever writes to her about the prophecy. Undergraduates around the world write about how Lady Macbeth pushes him to commit horrible crimes–crimes against his king, his kin, his guest.

I have never seen an essay arguing that perhaps war — perhaps his joy in ripping men from nave to neck — had anything to do with the psychopath he becomes.

The only half-way comforting thought in my ruminations today (half-way because it’s not actually a cheering thought) was that there are several things we don’t know how to do yet.

We don’t know how to love, successfully, do we? How to love without jealousy. How to trust. How to practice monogamy when we’re not built for it.

We’ve had even more practice with love than with war, and yet we fail. A lot.

Other things we don’t know–how to parent, how to educate, how to balance religion with not being a bigot . . .

 

Lady Macbeth:  Where is She Now?

I’m always met with questions.
Did I really fall?
What was in that letter?
Aside from being none of your business,
It doesn’t really matter.
I’m always already judged—
“She wears the pants in that family.”
Well, it would have been more comfortable,
But around here it’s more accurate to note
Who was wearing the skirts.
It is Scotland, after all.

I am likened to those hags.
I change in your titles
From a dearest partner
To instrument of darkness.
You’re always painting me
Black or white.
And here I am—red all over.

I get in trouble for my images,
Because I say milk and gall and dash.
It’s beside the point,
But you try having your nipples
Cracked and chapped
By some colicky brat
And you try not to think of it.
In any case, I didn’t do it.
I merely said, hypothetically,
That I would.

Is that really worse than what he did?
Unseaming people from navel to chops.
Please—war is no excuse
When all the world is war.
Don’t be so naïve.
Is it because I’m a woman
That you’re offended?
Well, there’s an implicit war there, too.
And don’t think my body
Hasn’t played the battlefield.

I didn’t always talk this way.
But the hero
Kept coming home
And wanting to retell his exploits
To relive his victories
In our sacred marital bed.
It got so he couldn’t get excited
Any other way.
And so I steeled myself for him
Trained myself to taunt

     To take it

     To cry out

     As he cut me

     “Deeper!”

Why do you think
I’m so unphased by

      Blood

     Knives

     Poison

     Horsemeat?

So when I asked those that
Tend on mortal thoughts
To tend on mine
It was no big deal.
I’ve been plundered before.

Hereafter, when you ponder me
Remember
Hell is murky
And so is vision
With or without that candle.