Juxtaposition
It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~ Isaac Asimov
Leaving the Café Del Sol, after our Scrabble game on Sunday, my friend Mara and I discovered that we were unexpectedly stuck in town, but we also had front row seats to our local Veterans Day Parade.
Unlike most parades with festive themes, this one was understandably solemn. While I enjoyed watching the girl scouts and boy scouts, the high school band, and the veterans – many of whom were WWII vets like my father, marching by – I also had many mixed feelings. I felt respect mixed with deep sadness underneath a growing frustration with wars that aren’t about self-defense and the rash leaders who send young men to fight them.
I like to photograph scrabble boards to capture the setting and ambiance of the games I play, and so I conveniently had a camera in my hand when the above scene crystallized in front of me. It spoke to the ambivalence I was feeling.
My friend Mara’s car, covered with anti-war bumper stickers, stood out like a parade float as a color guard of men with rifles flanked by. “Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding” one bumper sticker quoting Albert Einstein read. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” read another one with a picture of Gandhi on it.
The parade marchers and Mara’s car were facing in opposite directions. I stood transfixed, as though looking at an artist’s installation. I focused my stare at the place where the marchers met with and then passed Mara’s car, as though it was a threshold of hope. At some point even polar opposites will meet and what appears to be polar opposites may not really be. We all exist together on this street, in this town, in this country and world, I thought, as I noticed a few neighborly faces in the parade ranks and lifted my arm to wave to them.
November 16th, 2005 9:48 am
Morning. Michele sent me.
November 16th, 2005 9:57 am
It’s drizzly & nastified down here by the lake.
November 16th, 2005 10:12 am
I am surprised that a full-fledged fight didn’t break out over the anti-war stickers.
November 16th, 2005 10:48 am
Lovely post, I’m so glad you had your camera with you. The car facing in the opposite direction of the parade is an interesting coincidence.
But I’m glad it was there.
November 16th, 2005 3:08 pm
I am with you, Coleen…As a kid I use to look forward to these parades and the Memorial Day parade too, in our town…it always made me cry to see the Veterans wqalking as they carried our flag….What is happening today is so very depressing…(I love that your friend has all those stickers all over her car)…I pray there will be some way out of the mess we are in…
And by the way, the books have nit come as yet, but I will let you know when they do…Thanks for asking…
November 16th, 2005 5:05 pm
What a fantastic description of the day. Thanks for sharing.
November 16th, 2005 8:50 pm
Nice photograph. I hate it how being anti-war is often protrayed as anti-american. I should put some bumperstickers on my trucks–except I don’t do bumperstickers.
November 16th, 2005 10:20 pm
The dichotomoy in that photo is amazing. My car’s bumper sticker says “YeeHaw is not a foreign policy” and my motorcycle helmet has the “no dubbya” sticker. My joke with the motorcycle helmet is that if I ever get ran over, you’ll know someone swerved from the far right to do it.
November 16th, 2005 10:55 pm
Ha! That’s a great joke. Mine says “When Jesus says love your enemy I think he probably meant don’t kill them.”
November 16th, 2005 11:39 pm
don’t you just love it when art happens?
November 17th, 2005 1:41 am
That shot says it all.
Back in the 80s I was part of an antiwar march in New York, and was gratified to see some of the cops on hand wearing peace buttons.
November 17th, 2005 8:43 am
Don’t, for a second, assume that the vets marching in that parade support war or the current action in Iraq. I know a lot of the vets who marched that day and they strongly oppose the invasion of Iraq. I volunteered and served in Vietnam but am militantly antiwar and publicly oppose the Iraq war.
Veterans Day is not about war. It’s about honoring those who serve our country.
November 17th, 2005 9:29 am
That’s a good point, Doug. I would think that war vets would be especially sensitive to wars that could and should have been avoided, and I’m encouraged that many are. And their voices carry weight.
November 17th, 2005 1:59 pm
Now that is a LOT of bumper stickers! Egad. You did a great job in capturing the moment.