25
by Uncle Ovipositor_Archive
[I posted this over at the reader, but I wanted to post it here as well. I'm sorry I won't be at the memorial, but my thoughts are with everyone who will be there. Obviously I've been thinking about this a lot.]
In Iraq, people are having their names, addresses, and phone numbers tattooed on their bodies so that they can be identified more easily if they die. No rational person can feel anything but crushed by that. There are any number of similar horrific factoids about this war, all equally repellent, all impossible to get your head around. The “big picture” is even more grim than these little nuggets. For those of us not in positions to stop this insanity right fucking now (i.e., all of us), I don’t know if there are any sane reactions. Malachi made his choice about how to respond to this situation. I’m sure there were a lot of other factors that made this seem like the appropriate path to take, but that was his ultimate point: to protest the war.
The war is still going on, one in a long line of horrific human events. Malachi is not still going on, one in a thin string of exciting and intelligent people I’ve known. I do not like this math. There is a long history of dying for ones idealism, by ones own hand or the hand of those you oppose, in an effort to forward your views amongst the larger population or, if not them, history. Malachi has made damn sure that everyone knows which side he was on. Personally, I wish he would have stayed around to fight the good fight. It might not have had the dramatic impact of immolating himself, but it would have allowed him to still be doing the things that made his life remarkable.
I wish I had a chance to argue with him about this. Because I liked arguing with him. He liked it, too, and we could go back and forth over whatever for hours on end. I liked talking with him about nothing, about books, about music, about the things we both cared about. I wish we had done more of it, and I wish I hadn’t been so bad about keeping in touch with him over the past few years.
And I wish he had stayed around to keep contributing good things to the world, something he undeniably did.
I don’t doubt that he made an intellectual decision to do what he did. He was an extremely intellectual guy. That’s what I liked so much about him, that’s what I’ll miss. Ultimately, talking about his death, he is the issue being discussed, not the war. One could argue that I think that because I knew him, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think people who didn’t know him will say to themselves, “This war is so horrible that some guy in Chicago immolated himself,” but rather just, “Some guy in Chicago immolated himself.” There’s no equivalency between his death and the deaths in Iraq. There is no atonement, only more death. And as a fan of live music, as someone who used to look forward to talking with him about anything and everything, as someone who benefited from his insights – for me and those like me, there is the loss of a great individual.
Whatever I or anyone else may think about his death, he led a remarkable life. I admired him. I’ll miss him.
And yes, the way one corner of his mouth would start sneaking back into a smile of recognition, followed by the other corner – that’s a great memory. Secret handshake indeed.