life


i don't like people very much. but i started out liking them a lot. i can't figure out what happened.

question: if you kill people, then you can't like them.

diana: that's not true. you can kill with compassion or cruelty just like anything else.

question: it used to be that women didn't kill or we didn't believe that women killed. in any case, we didn't put women in jail for killing because we didn't believe that women really kill.

diana: i know what you mean. it's sort of macho in people's mind, taking away life.

question: and women make life.

diana: but actually you need both genders to make life and both can easily take it away,

question: i have issues.

diana: me too. you want to go first?

question: sure. i resent that i went to school and left the world of women i grew up in and made my way in a world full of men and competed and won a lot, and lost some. i resent that because i can't go back. i'm not comfortable with regular women's life anymore.

diana: not many women in our civilization are. it's like war, work. i mean, in world war two when people got around, or in napoleon's war, when people got to see how other people lived by warring against them and also by the general mix of people in an army, there's a lot of random talk. people aren't relying on news to understand other people. the "others" are right there... and then they want what they see the others have, an education, status, whatever. and they come back from war demanding from their government, more. they want what is possible to have. well, now it's like that for women who work. we go out, we see what there is and we know we still don't have much of that, if any at all.

question: i'm not sure i want what's there. i wanted to go there because i thought what i wanted was there but what they want is there, what i want is in me... but i'm not sure how to make it happen.

diana: i don't have the answer for that. i bet you think i do, that i'm independent but that's silly. no one is not here. we're all here. we all have to live within the world as it is.

question: if you are that accepting, then why kill people?

diana: it's not personal. it was a job.

question: killing your father is personal.

diana: yes, but i didn't kill him.

question: but -

diana: but they say i did. but i say i didn't.

question: but i've heard you say that you did.

diana: i meant i hurt him so hard that he couldn't keep up his hypervigilance, he lost the will to challenge and defeat. and so he was an easy target. don't be silly, no one asks a child to kill her parent.

question: i think you're lying. because you don't want to go to jail.

diana: i'm in jail.

question: i know. but if you can convince them that someone else killed your father, you can get out.

diana: the problem is philosophical. the distinction has to do with how we are alive, with the essence of what makes alive alive as opposed to dead.

question: this sounds like bullshit to me.

diana: i like you better now.


About this entry