Today, May 1, was a national holiday, which I remembered
while waiting for a bus that would never come.
May 1 is also, consequently, the first day of May. I’ve
heard there’s a tradition of “dancing into May,” which might mean dancing around
a fire through midnight, or even leaping over a (minuscule, I hope) fire.
Back home we say, “April showers bring May flowers,” but
today it did nothing but rain.
I had been slowly losing focus on the Mozart score before me
when my eyes drifted to my bedroom window and I saw the clouds begin to open.
In the midst of what has been my most stressful period in Weimar, I had to
smile. Leaving my music behind in my room, I opened the front door, pulled up a
chair, and just sat, breathing in the fresh air and listening to the rain hit
the courtyard’s steel roof.
A while later my roommate suddenly appeared in the doorway –
me, having zoned out and therefore vulnerable to shock by sudden appearances,
she, wondering what the heck I was doing.
“Es regnet so
selten zu Hause,” I explained. Where I come from, rain is a true blessing. Summers can run 100
days in a row at 100+°F (in the neighborhood of 38-40°C) without a single drop.
As I sat there, I asked myself why I enjoy the rain so much,
and I think it must be the single most beautiful smell nature has to offer, the
smell of water cleansing the earth, returning to the surface in a cycle that
has sustained life since the moment two hydrogens decided to sandwich an oxygen
at an angle of 104.5°. Snails and slugs are invited from their burrows onto the
otherwise barren asphalt by the deluge of raindrops, tiny freefalling travelers,
who some call the teardrops of angels.
“Why are the angels crying today?” I mused.
Later that day I saw an article shared with the American CBYX-ers
in Germany headlined, “Deutsche Teenager in den USA: ‘Meine Mitschülerverteidigen den Schützen” (“German Teenagers in the USA: ‘My classmates are defending the
shooter’”).
 |
| look around you |
A 17-year-old German boy on exchange in a Montana high school was shot
and killed by a local gun owner. Other German teens abroad in the States shared
their reactions in the above article. I’d highly recommend quickly running it
through Google Translate for a wake-up call, not only to see how Americans are
being perceived by the young Germans they are hosting (and by the German
readership of Der Spiegel), but also
for the chance to view the highly-controversial “2nd Amendment/gun
control” issue from a non-American perspective.
Eine US-Amerikanerin in Deutschland: "Ich würde absolut nie die Schützen
verteidigen"
Upon hearing of this young man’s death, I felt tremendous sadness,
anger, and shame.
Sadness, because his death was unnecessary. Life is precious
and should never be violently taken away, let alone for something as
inconsequential as “the presence of a stranger in one’s intentionally-left-open garage.”
Anger, because his death was unnecessary. With the incident being
so recent, it remains unclear exactly what happened, but even as the
investigation continues, even as testimonies (reliable or not) are collected,
the fact remains that a 17-year-old, a guest
in our country – one I pride myself as being a place where dreams can come true
– will never see his family again or have the chance to pursue his dreams. All
because some trigger-happy, overly-anxious “adult” thought he’d play
detective and deliberately lure “danger”
onto his property.
Shame, because his death was unnecessary. I am a born and raised Texan,
and I love my state for the wild bluebonnets that bloom in the spring, for its
Southern hospitality and pecan pies, for its rare rainy days, when the earth
sighs in relief and the air smells its freshest. What hits home the hardest is
the fact that Texans are also known as proud gun owners, a broader group to
whom the shooter belonged, and that my label as “Texan,” which I normally bear with
an easy grin, is only that much harder to bear as a “young cultural ambassador”
in Germany, the young man’s former home.
Out of curiosity I often ask Germans what they associate with Texas. They answer: cowboys,
oil, George W. Bush, and – let’s not forget – guns.
Americans hear “guns” and think: 2nd Amendment, the NRA, DickCheney,
metal detectors in schools.
Germans hear “guns” and just cannot even –
I can’t even –
Why?
Why was it ever possible for that man to own a gun? Why did
he think it was acceptable for him to open fire?
Yes, I understand that not every gun-owning American will
kill an innocent, but the fact remains that a percentage of them will and have. How do you account for that? And no statistic, no matter how “small,”
is life that we can afford to lose.
The eradication of guns would be the only fail-safe way of
preventing death by guns. That’ll never happen, obviously, in a country where 19%
(or $643 billion) of the 2013 national budget was allocated to defense and international
security assistance; in a world where North Korea drops little gifts off the
coast of its southern neighbor; in a world where just today, Russian President
Putin informed German Chancellor Merkel that Ukraine must remove its military
from the southeastern region of the country, where conflict between local officials
and pro-Russian separatists has continued (despite the US-EU-Russia-Ukraine-brokered
call just two weeks prior in Geneva for the disarmament of illegal formations)
and where NATO and Russian forces are humming in the background.
Who will call whose bluff?
It’s certainly a completely different scale – multi-national
conflict and shooting someone on one’s property. Either way, it involves humans
feeling empowered by the destructive capabilities of weapons, even beyond
peaceful resolution. It involves the blurred lines of right and wrong.
“I have the right to defend myself on my own property.”
“Russia retains the right to send in troops.”
“I have the right to take away human life.”
Who do you think you
are?
