#119: they were born to go

assignment: vertical orientation, single focus



"let it go -- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go




"let them go -- the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers -- you must let them go they
were born
to go



"let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love"

#79, e.e.cummings



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Cover 3/3: How many minutes of watching footage of 800-ft boats crossing and tossing the bar does it take before you get seasick? Answer: roughly 5.

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You never know how past stories will come back to you. I was proofing the Exchange this morning and saw this letter. It is related to this story ("Brothers get 20 months for random beating" 2/8/10). You will see, at the bottom, a comment from their mother. There was also a letter from his sister. They were hard to read. And when I did read them I wanted to defend myself, explain about court and how I'm quoting what is the official record. None of these sentences are my own in that their facts did not originate with me. But I can't defend myself and what would be the point anyway? To tell them I'm basically some kid who spent over an hour phrasing and rephrasing the story to try to make it as anonymous and dry-fact as possible?

It's one of the stories I really didn't want to write because this is how you'd write it: you go to the court, get a rundown from an official, maybe a look at a report and then you sit through the proceedings and hear people with titles retell the story and you write it down because what's said in court is the official record and sometimes you dig and sometimes you don't. It is possible, in this listening process, to think of it in terms of "official." I have to tell myself not to over-think, to ride on the "official," because otherwise I would be paralyzed, neck down, and not able to write anything and the writing is the job, the being there is the job, the human drama is also the job and sometimes the human pain, along with the human stupidity, cruelness, dirt, and heavy hands.

As a reporter, I have discovered, unless you are on trial for libel or scandal or whatever else you can rack up by reporting, no one except your co-workers (sometimes) and your friends (sometimes) hear the full story. Everyone else gets this cold piece of 500 words, 400 words, bald news copy that can't include everything and is trusting people told the truth--or, at least, their real opinion, marked and labeled.

Reporters are not gods, endowed with an innate knowledge of What's Really Going On. We're ditch diggers. We don't always know what it is we're digging up, but we pat it into pottery as best we can and try to be fair, faithful and available at the other end of the office telephone.

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It's funny. Often the first thing I am blamed for in angry emails is that I wrote horrible things about people I don't know. And here there are the letter writers, to whom I cannot respond, calling me, a stranger, all sorts of things. Primarily: liar, hack, worthless, shameful.

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In a case like the one way up above, there is no way I can know or tell what really happened, as the letter writers ask me to understand their Real. There are so many versions and there are the men's own statements in court that they did not know the man they beat up. The base remains the same: something criminal happened. Pain is unquantifiable and human beings inscrutable and families are full of grief. How far back should we go now? I could write for years and still not understand it. I could live forever and miss everything while casting nets.

I hate that.

The letter today though made me happy and I hope with all my heart that it's sincere.