that child of mine

wrote this today:


I know its kind of over the top but I though it was interesting research.


History is determined by those who write it. This is why I like tattoos. I
know that they are an unchanging documentation of the choices I have made.
My tattoos are my history; I put them on my body to force me to remember.
Personal perspective denies me the ability to act recklessly in situations
where I should know better. Without history my body would be covered with
indelible bookmarks that look like painful, embarrassing and ugly scars.
America has a bad habit of forgetting why they got their tattoos. At 11a.m.
on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the world sat in history’s tattoo
parlor as the most violent and ugly war we had ever known ended. The month,
time and day were buzz sawed into America’s biceps so she would know better
than to flex them for reckless reasons. Armistice day sounds like something
permanent and humble, it sounds like a moment when this country could
remember a violent drunken mistake and the sobering repercussions of 8
million lives lost.
President Eisenhower established the first Veterans Day on November 11,
1954 in order to give all of those killed in American War’s a day of
remembrance. The exact language he used was, “the United States has been
involved in two other great military conflicts, which have added millions of
veterans living and dead to the honor rolls of this Nation.” If our history
were skin the tattoo terminology that would be used for this new ink would
be a “cover up.” A cover up is a new tattoo placed on top of an old tattoo
in order to space on the body. I don’t have any cover-ups.
Today my neighborhood smells like America, like Bar-Be-Q’s, gasoline and
working class liberties. There are no reminders of our inability to stop
ourselves from resorting back to violence. The most I have seen of the
military in my neighborhood in the last week were a few recruiters trying to
sell death to the many first generation Americans who live here. I wonder if
they tell the new recruits that over 25% of the deaths in Iraq have come
from minorities. I wonder if when the decision was made to invade Iraq the
powers at be thought about the resignation this country made in 1918 to
never let a death toll go unchecked or if it realized that most of America
has forgotten. The 8 million killed in W.W.I now looks like a small
watermark on the currency of war that we have come to think of as a
“necessary” means to perchance peace. Veterans Day is an open-ended casualty
cover all that continues to grow with each generation.
Armistice day was a high water mark; Veterans Day is a blank check. This is
the difference. My history is written so that it absolutely cannot change.
America’s is written so that it absolutely can.

much love
blake

how did i get so lucky as to have a child like this who can write and question and think like this? i am a blessed woman