krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

September 17, 2001 by krisis

MetaFilter mostly slammed Madonna for weighing in on the state of the nation during her Friday Los Angeles show, but after giving her speech a read i think it’s probably the most intelligent thing anyone has said in the past six days. To discount an opinion because it comes from someone of celebrity status is ridiculous, especially when it’s from someone who is so much more educated about the cultures of the world than some of the American’s who are so quick to give their opinion. Madonna is self-made, controls her own business, currently lives abroad, and has two young children. I think that alone would make me interested in what she had to say, but i think you’ll see that it wasn’t just interesting … it was true.

Howdy, Los Angeles! Having a good time? It’s kind of confusing trying to have a good time this week as you all know, and I want you all to know how privileged I feel to be in the position that I am in today.

We don’t…we’re not doing the show because we want people to forget, we’re doing the show because we want to remind people of how precious life is. And how full of joy it should be.

The tragedy that occurred this week is unthinkable but i want to think of it as a big fucking wakeup call. OK? But now that we’re all awake, we should stay awake. Acts of terrorism are going on in this country on a regular basis, ok? In England, in Ireland, in…Israel, in Palestine, in India, in Tibet, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Africa and Bosnia and Afghanistan. I could go on and on. OK?

Last night, last night we said a prayer for in a moment of silence, ok, 18,000 people shut up. Hard to believe but it’s true. We had a moment of silence where we said a prayer for everyone who died Tuesday morning, for all the family and friends of those who died. Tonight, I’d like everyone to say a prayer for peace. I’d like everyone to say a prayer that President Bush practices restraint in his decision making, and he does not retaliate this act of violence with another act of violence, ok. Because violence only begets violence.

So please everyone, no kidding, can we just keep quiet, bow our heads, grab the person next to you, I don’t care, but please, say a prayer. Repeat, because I don’t know about you but I want to live a long and happy life, I want my kids to live a long and happy life, ok.

[Long pause followed by chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience.]

All right, all right, I knew it wouldn’t go on for a minute. OK, USA, yeah, but the whole world OK. Start thinking in a global way. Please! Thank you very much. Thank you. I said it last night and I’m going to say it again, if you want the world to change, change yourself.

[via MadonnaRama, who should implement permalinks]

All of the proceeds from Madonna’s Los Angeles shows were donated to relief funds related to last Tuesday’s events, including one for children who lost parents in the tragedy.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5740206/

September 16, 2001 by krisis

MapQuest claims that i walked less than ten miles in yesterday’s travels from my house to the corner of 5th and South and back, but i’m not prone to believe it; even if the distance is really that relatively tiny when being roved over by four wheels, it certainly feels like twice that if you walk every step of it and take in the sights and sounds along the way.

Yesterday saw me starting off at home and slowly slipping farther and farther into the city until i was past it and had to work my way back through… first to admissions and then retreating back to the theatre, next quickly into 30th street station and then down to and around and around the same block of Chinatown looking for a good vegetarian restaurant, unintentionally down to South Street, and finally back up to Rittenhouse Square – where everything stalled out for almost two hours as my world reduced down to two people and one tiny park bench that was put there for a woman who refused to sit still.

At some point in eighth grade we were filling out some redundant “getting to know you” survey, and one of the questions prompted us to fill in our favourite physical place to be. My partner in the exercise listed locations in Paris and in London, and others in the class named other cities and states. The only place i could think to write down was Rittenhouse, which is just a city-block sized square of green dotted with an indefinitely multiplying quantity of benches. The me of six years ago couldn’t even begin to fathom something better than a tiny piece of quiet in the middle of the knotted urban mess of my city, and i’m almost a little sad to say that today it still ranks implausibly high of my favourites places in the world. The fact of the matter is that i’ve hardly ever been to another place that would compete not only for character but for context, and in my limited experience the square still has impressive rank.

I was a little surprised that Rabi had never been there before, so i aimed our trip back towards the train station so that we would pass Rittenhouse Square. As the amount of Walnut street between us and the square quickly shrank i had this mental zero-g moment where i caught myself wondering why i was even bothering: i’ve spent less than three hours of my entire life there, i manage to not think about it for months or years at a time, and typically i just walk through it on my way to a bookstore. I suppose i just wanted to show her something that was inherently plugged into my concept of Philadelphia… moreso than any certain skyscraper or piece of history.

When Rabi failed to gasp at the tiny block of neat grass and wooden benches i was hardly surprised, but somewhere along the way i think she got the point. Of course, mileage obviously varies.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5724030/

September 14, 2001 by krisis

Everything i write nowadays is toolong and verywordy. I can’t seem to help myself; i’m just not as omnipresently connected as i used to be and the things i have been wanting to say just build and build until they are no longer simple phrases or paragraphs. Do you remember when this used to be snap reactions to hardwood floors, or fuzzy butterflies swirling in my stomach and the awkwardness that always ensues as a result? Hardwood floors have turned into brick walls and sloped ceilings, but that special breed of butterfly does emerge from a cocoon every so often to do a loop-to-loop just beneath my esophagus. I’m just left wondering if it’s my intent, my writing, or my editing that changed along the way. Obviously it would have to be a little bit of all three… but, what don’t i talk about now that you used to expect to hear from me? I’d really like to know.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5693168/

September 14, 2001 by krisis

And, oh, hi, i also have a life. I think this week was one that was ripe for all sorts of essay-length posts from me regarding what i mentioned in Monday’s mammoth post, but then Tuesday happened.

In 1996 i was 14, and i had just created my first website when TWA800 crashed. For the entire summer the footer of my painstakingly hand-coded splash page bore the visage of Mr. Benjamin, a favourite teacher of mine who had died on the flight.

I remember my reaction very clearly… how i was unable to tear myself away from Good Morning America that day before heading out to camp even though i didn’t know yet; how my mother was silent when she picked me up all the way until Broad Street; how the bottom dropped out of my stomach when i heard; how loosing someone who i didn’t even think about every day had a huger impact on my entire life than i ever could have imagined. I took a day off from camp so that i could go to our too-empty high school to sit with friends who understood how i felt, and when i got back the next day everyone had heard. It felt like they were all at once telling my how sorry they were and asking me through our van window how i was feeling and treating me like i was some fragile thing in a china shop that you are always afraid to brush up against because you don’t want to have to pay for it.

I don’t think i had ever known anyone else who had died of something that wasn’t related to age, and i wasn’t braced for the emotions that would result. Or for the consolations. I was utterly wrecked by both, but i kept it churning inside of my stomach because i didn’t know i was allowed to let it out. I thought that just knowing someone who died and was mentioned on teevee was not enough for me to have the right to be sad in front of anyone but people who shared my own position in the matter because my grief was so different than what everyone kept expecting.

Flight 800 is the first “Do you remember where you were when you heard…” that i had in my life, and it just so happened that i had a personal connection to it. For other people in my generation that event might have been the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, or Oklahoma City, or Columbine, or Princess Diana … there was no single across-the-board bookmark in our memory. Until now.

The funny thing about nationally (and internationally) televised tragedies is that we all feel like we have a right to react to them no matter how large, small, close, or far they may be. Everyone certainly does have a right to their personal feelings on anything that goes on in America, but with any other national event our collective obsession with being involved in the investigative process is only dwarfed in its tastelessness by our insistence that we be involved in the mourning process. Of course, this event is different in scale, scope, and national ramifications. But, after i got over my attempts to ascertain what was going on i stood back and realized that i have almost definitely not lost anyone i know… and i realized that at this point in time there is no place for my emotional or personal reaction to the tragedy that has befallen us here or anywhere else.

I remember how people thought they were being comforting when they offered their thoughts and prayers to me when really they just made me feel more fragile than i already was. This is not my tragedy the way it is for people who lost friends and family, or even for people whose cities were permanently altered. I can’t ignore the awful politics inherent to this situation, or that some people i know suddenly feel the need to discriminate again people with a different skin color or accent of their own.

What i can leave out of my reactions, although certainly not ignore, is my emotional and visceral reaction to Tuesday. If you are gushing about Tuesday, or if you are delighting in watching the investigation continually unfold on the news every night, i want you to take a strong look at what your interest is. Over the years i have learned to separate my emotions from my voyeurism because i don’t think it is my right to want to grieve on the behalf of anyone else, or to hear news that doesn’t pertain to me.

Yes, i am a Journalism student who hates the nightly news… every invasive investigative informational minute of it. There is something to be said for staying abreast of the current state of the rescue efforts in New York and in Washington, and on stories about the victims and their families. However, I think it is safe to say that the majority of America is partially or wholly ignorant of the motives behind the horror we’ve all been a witness to, and i very much hope that most of my readership is mature enough to focus on educating themselves before wallowing in the network’s excessive coverage.

You might disagree with everything i just said, but ultimately i think that anything else i could say couldn’t ever mean as much as my respectful silence on the matter. My thoughts are with everyone this has affected and, for now, i’m going to leave it at that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5692813/

September 14, 2001 by krisis

Life is conspiring against me posting to blogger. First there was the problem of only having one working phone jack in the apartment, but i solved that by dangling off the roof with a fifty foot phone wire a few nights ago. Then, last night i arrived home with posts precomposed in my head only to find that at same point in walking up and down the steps with my computer monitor two of the pins in its plug had been bent and so it wouldn’t connect to my computer. This hurdle involved a one hour surgery performed with metal banjo picks and a nail clipper, but my computer was somehow rendered functional again afterwards. However, that got me absolutely nowhere seeing as our mysterious phone line was finally turned off, leaving me stranded in my apartment with no means of telecommunication whatsoever.

Sorry, just felt the need to vent.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5691968/