02.24.2003 - 11:32 a.m.

The wind last night was a blunt object aimed at your gut. I was out in it only briefly, top-heavy with an overnight bag and a collection of food items Mom swore she �needed me to help her finish.� My parents� sidewalk is still a snowbound trench with a few inches of water at the bottom; their driveway is still a gravel bar at the base of white walls as high as my waist. The wind whipped through the space along my car so hard I could hear it.

I was in a weird headspace; we had just been to see Gods and Generals for my father�s birthday, and my mind was still full of bayonets and beards and Stonewall Jackson�s beautiful horse.

Intellectually I understand why people go to war; pride, patriotism, a sense that you are right or that the other side is forcing your hand. But I will never understand how thousands of men can stand on a field where none of them wants to be and do such terrible things to each other. It seems to me that if no one wants war then it shouldn�t have to happen, but the same time, I can understand that if I were in that place and time (and if they had women in the army), I maybe wouldn�t put my rifle down. I would come up with reasons why it was important to kill or be killed, and I would be just like them, feverishly building my own little section of hell because I knew the other side wasn�t going to stop first. In the end, it would be about surviving, not about whatever social or intellectual disagreement got the whole thing started. That�s my problem with war. Maybe it can be necessary, or on rare occasions even right, but it�s never about what it�s supposed to be about. It just starts, and then it snowballs, and then nobody can figure out how to stop killing each other.

The inertia of human events is profoundly frightening to me.

So anyway, not my favorite movie.

-stonebridge

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