I’m having breakfast with Sally. We all know Sally. No, not April’s friend, this is the one who used to date Mark.
Yeah, he’s still in love with her. But I’m the one eating with her.
This is December 28, 2004 at 12:06 PM. Oh, I guess you’d call that lunch. But she’s still here, and I’m here, and she’s talking.
`It’s such a tragedy,’ she’s saying. She’s saying, `All those people, fishing and harvesting, or whatever it is Indonesians do, and poof, Poseidon does a cannonball in his backyard pool and thousands of lives are gone.’
I ask her what’s she’s ordering.
She says, `And the way the news media has been covering it, I’m mean, they’re fast, they get the information out to us, but they’re putting the entirely wrong spin on it.’
I tell her that `news media’ is redundant.
`Just wrong,’ she says. `The papers especially. They have those Weight Watchers Before and After pictures for that one south Asian island. It’s there, and then it’s gone. Lives summed up with two stagnant images.
`A before, and an after,’ she says.
`I like those better,’ I say. `I can just glance and see, and not worry about reading all those columns in between. All those words gripping for explanation where a simple picture will do.
`Oooh,’ I say. `Waffles.’
She’s not too interested in the menu, `Don’t you get it though? That’s what the problem is, they’re trying to show a story instead of tell one.’ She’s saying that the newspapers are offering us human drama through voyeuristic means, peering down, as it were, from some satellite. She’s saying, `These pictures are detached, they aren’t personal or intimate, they don’t put a face on the disaster. The pictures, they’re aerial, they’re too high up and far away.
`They’re the Heavens,’ she says.
`At least it’s a nice change from the usual,’ I offer.
`But the usual is even worse,’ she says. `The news media is trying to serve us up a plate of the tragic. They’re trying to make us androids or robots or slaves. They’re making us immune to horror,’ she says.
She says.
I look up from my menu for the first time, `Should I get straw- or blueberry topping?’
`They’re right in the thick of it,’ answers Sally. `The news media is. You turn on the television and there, right in front of you, at twenty-nine point nine seven frames per second, is some amateur footage of a pregnant woman getting shot on the steps of a church.’
`I don’t think I want kids,’ I say.
The waitress steps up firing, `What can I get you guys?’ I want waffles. Sally, she wants scrambled eggs.
A moment passes. Silent. And then Sally asks me to think about it. She says, `The news media is feeding our hunger for ruin.
`There is an innate thirst,’ she’s saying, `for destruction that surfaces in the curious stares of motorists who slow to an almost deadening pace in an effort to perhaps get a glimpse of death itself between gaps of crushed metal. It’s there when we watch daredevils, stunt drivers, stunt fliers, building climbers, and paradivers. Or chutters, whatever. And the people who wind up being one of those without even trying. Putting on the premier of their own deaths.’
I notice that I only have a knife and spoon set out for me while Sally explains that this need for horror and shock to facilitate the taboo urges of humanity presents itself in every small action taken by a man, woman, or child, to witness something cruel or heartbreaking. `Or perhaps even earth shattering, as was the case,’ she says, `of this whole Indian Ocean Earthquake that caused that damn tsunami to swell up and devastate the costal regions of southern Asia.’
`The news,’ I say, `is just giving us what we want: vivid images-delicately near and garish.’
More than just a before. Than just an after.
I tell her it would be nice if everything were a satellite photo.
`All crime,’ I say. `All violence.’
Sally, the girl I’m eating with, the one we all know, she says, `That’s ignorant thinking. Don’t be like that,’ she’s saying. `Listen: right now, you can now cuddle up on your couch, loveseat, or armchair, and, sipping from a cool glass of orange soda, flip on the television set and watch the tsunami’s demolition run on the various news media channels. It’s an incredible sight to see, but if it gets too real you can always pull your blanket over your eyes. You can always see what else is on.’
`But you won’t,’ I say.
She looks.
`How’s April?’ I say.
She goes, “Who?’
Oh, right, I think.
The other table, they got here after us, and they’re eating already.
`You know what would be great,’ I say, I don’t ask. `It would be great if everyone got together and made some rules to protect us from death and suffering.’ I say, `I think that for every single act of violence and death that goes on there should be a limit to what the news can cover. There should be a restraining order, a boundary between the shock and awe, and how close the cameras can get.’
I’m telling her that if only there weren’t images in close and tight of people being smacked down by waves and dying, if there weren’t gunshot victims and liquor store robberies on film, then I’d be happy. We’d all be, because we wouldn’t know the extent of human suffering.
She says it doesn’t matter. She says, `We have a fetish for the drama, the allure, the theater, which accompanies natural disasters. We sit and we watch the voyeuristic approach that the media takes.’
`Yeah,’ I say. `But we’re distant. The image is too far away to make us care.
`Here comes the food,’ I say.
The waitress sets our plates down.
I dig in, using my spoon, talking, saying, `Personally, I think we should take that pregnant woman-the one you’ve left bloodied and dying on the church steps-and not show her face, not show her eyes glass over with cloudy skies, but only relay her story from five miles up and out of focus. You know, get real far away. So far that we won’t be able to tell it’s so bad. We won’t know a person is dying.
`Like God,’ I say.
God who isn’t dead, who hasn’t forgotten about us.
But who’s just too far away to care.
`Then maybe, maybe we can stop worrying about how sad the rest of the world seems to us, or how we’re told to be afraid of it. We’ll be rid of those people who feel the need to boast their self-view through the tragedy of other lives over breakfast with a friend. We can live in the world without seeing its entirety. We can all just assume it’s an okay sphere to float through life on. We can just be.’
Between bites I say, `Then everyone will be perfect, just perfect.
`Like me,’ I say. `Like these waffles. These waffles are good.’
Sally, she hasn’t touched her food. She tells me I’m an ass. I’ve offended her I guess. Oh, well. I should patch it up. I should say something comforting so that she knows her opinion is the right one and mine doesn’t count. I should say something.
I say, `Who was it that Mark cheated on you with again?’
I say, `And finish your fucking eggs.’
Michael Martin
Michael Martin
Calamity Is A Wave Called Sally
I’m having breakfast with Sally. We all know Sally. No, not April’s friend, this is the one who used to date Mark.
Yeah, he’s still in love with her. But I’m the one eating with her.
This is December 28, 2004 at 12:06 PM. Oh, I guess you’d call that lunch. But she’s still here, and I’m here, and she’s talking.
`It’s such a tragedy,’ she’s saying. She’s saying, `All those people, fishing and harvesting, or whatever it is Indonesians do, and poof, Poseidon does a cannonball in his backyard pool and thousands of lives are gone.’
I ask her what’s she’s ordering.
She says, `And the way the news media has been covering it, I’m mean, they’re fast, they get the information out to us, but they’re putting the entirely wrong spin on it.’
I tell her that `news media’ is redundant.
`Just wrong,’ she says. `The papers especially. They have those Weight Watchers Before and After pictures for that one south Asian island. It’s there, and then it’s gone. Lives summed up with two stagnant images.
`A before, and an after,’ she says.
`I like those better,’ I say. `I can just glance and see, and not worry about reading all those columns in between. All those words gripping for explanation where a simple picture will do.
`Oooh,’ I say. `Waffles.’
She’s not too interested in the menu, `Don’t you get it though? That’s what the problem is, they’re trying to show a story instead of tell one.’ She’s saying that the newspapers are offering us human drama through voyeuristic means, peering down, as it were, from some satellite. She’s saying, `These pictures are detached, they aren’t personal or intimate, they don’t put a face on the disaster. The pictures, they’re aerial, they’re too high up and far away.
`They’re the Heavens,’ she says.
`At least it’s a nice change from the usual,’ I offer.
`But the usual is even worse,’ she says. `The news media is trying to serve us up a plate of the tragic. They’re trying to make us androids or robots or slaves. They’re making us immune to horror,’ she says.
She says.
I look up from my menu for the first time, `Should I get straw- or blueberry topping?’
`They’re right in the thick of it,’ answers Sally. `The news media is. You turn on the television and there, right in front of you, at twenty-nine point nine seven frames per second, is some amateur footage of a pregnant woman getting shot on the steps of a church.’
`I don’t think I want kids,’ I say.
The waitress steps up firing, `What can I get you guys?’ I want waffles. Sally, she wants scrambled eggs.
A moment passes. Silent. And then Sally asks me to think about it. She says, `The news media is feeding our hunger for ruin.
`There is an innate thirst,’ she’s saying, `for destruction that surfaces in the curious stares of motorists who slow to an almost deadening pace in an effort to perhaps get a glimpse of death itself between gaps of crushed metal. It’s there when we watch daredevils, stunt drivers, stunt fliers, building climbers, and paradivers. Or chutters, whatever. And the people who wind up being one of those without even trying. Putting on the premier of their own deaths.’
I notice that I only have a knife and spoon set out for me while Sally explains that this need for horror and shock to facilitate the taboo urges of humanity presents itself in every small action taken by a man, woman, or child, to witness something cruel or heartbreaking. `Or perhaps even earth shattering, as was the case,’ she says, `of this whole Indian Ocean Earthquake that caused that damn tsunami to swell up and devastate the costal regions of southern Asia.’
`The news,’ I say, `is just giving us what we want: vivid images-delicately near and garish.’
More than just a before. Than just an after.
I tell her it would be nice if everything were a satellite photo.
`All crime,’ I say. `All violence.’
Sally, the girl I’m eating with, the one we all know, she says, `That’s ignorant thinking. Don’t be like that,’ she’s saying. `Listen: right now, you can now cuddle up on your couch, loveseat, or armchair, and, sipping from a cool glass of orange soda, flip on the television set and watch the tsunami’s demolition run on the various news media channels. It’s an incredible sight to see, but if it gets too real you can always pull your blanket over your eyes. You can always see what else is on.’
`But you won’t,’ I say.
She looks.
`How’s April?’ I say.
She goes, “Who?’
Oh, right, I think.
The other table, they got here after us, and they’re eating already.
`You know what would be great,’ I say, I don’t ask. `It would be great if everyone got together and made some rules to protect us from death and suffering.’ I say, `I think that for every single act of violence and death that goes on there should be a limit to what the news can cover. There should be a restraining order, a boundary between the shock and awe, and how close the cameras can get.’
I’m telling her that if only there weren’t images in close and tight of people being smacked down by waves and dying, if there weren’t gunshot victims and liquor store robberies on film, then I’d be happy. We’d all be, because we wouldn’t know the extent of human suffering.
She says it doesn’t matter. She says, `We have a fetish for the drama, the allure, the theater, which accompanies natural disasters. We sit and we watch the voyeuristic approach that the media takes.’
`Yeah,’ I say. `But we’re distant. The image is too far away to make us care.
`Here comes the food,’ I say.
The waitress sets our plates down.
I dig in, using my spoon, talking, saying, `Personally, I think we should take that pregnant woman-the one you’ve left bloodied and dying on the church steps-and not show her face, not show her eyes glass over with cloudy skies, but only relay her story from five miles up and out of focus. You know, get real far away. So far that we won’t be able to tell it’s so bad. We won’t know a person is dying.
`Like God,’ I say.
God who isn’t dead, who hasn’t forgotten about us.
But who’s just too far away to care.
`Then maybe, maybe we can stop worrying about how sad the rest of the world seems to us, or how we’re told to be afraid of it. We’ll be rid of those people who feel the need to boast their self-view through the tragedy of other lives over breakfast with a friend. We can live in the world without seeing its entirety. We can all just assume it’s an okay sphere to float through life on. We can just be.’
Between bites I say, `Then everyone will be perfect, just perfect.
`Like me,’ I say. `Like these waffles. These waffles are good.’
Sally, she hasn’t touched her food. She tells me I’m an ass. I’ve offended her I guess. Oh, well. I should patch it up. I should say something comforting so that she knows her opinion is the right one and mine doesn’t count. I should say something.
I say, `Who was it that Mark cheated on you with again?’
I say, `And finish your fucking eggs.’