I feel I should say something about the talk of the town, Cho's vengeance. I don't know what to say about it though. Earlier this week, Brian was showing me a photography book of corpses, all different kinds in various stages of decay, mostly from crime scenes and other types of non-natural, and annotated with comments from police officers or whomever was investigating the death or deaths. Also there were pictures of hermaphrodite genitalia, which were very interesting. The pictures that made me the most sad were the dead prostitutes. They were slashed and beaten and left in embarrassing poses, I wish I could rescue all the prostitutes in the world. These photos bothered me more than the pictures of dead babies, "dumpster babies" it said on the side in marker. They looked plastic and shrivelled. I was amazed by how they can really fix a fucked up dead body for the funeral. I saw a lady who had been cut into chunks, torso in the suitcase, head somewhere else, well they sowed her back together and they can put your face back together too. There were many pictures of suicides, including people hanging themselves, sometimes in pairs, elderly romeos and juliets. What surprised me was how disgusting it looks when someone shoots their own head or face off. In movies and media there is a lot of shooting, but the scene always changes right after the shot. The person falls, that's all you know. But it goes everywhere, and the head might be sitting there for days like a bowl holding brains, the teeth rearranged, and everything all over the walls. Then they find you. The body doesn't just evaporate into thin air after the trigger is pulled, which is kind of how it seemed to me before studying this book. I thought a bullet wound was just a hole that leaked blood and your shirt turned red.
I should mention that all these pictures were from the earlier half of the century, so I also felt the strange effect of inanimate objects - their old dresses, brooches, hairstyles, hats. Things like this and photos of people wearing them affect me strongly because they show how a whole reality has come and gone, the culture of those people, the feeling that it would last forever, everything that was important and beautiful or ugly to them - it's like it never existed, except for the leftover things. And everything that is "now" and "real" will meet the same fate.
I don't know why but I ignored the story about Virginia Tech as it was breaking, and for a day or two afterward. In some ways, I wasn't interested, because it was just guns and guns are boring weapons. But then the photos came back to me and I remembered that it isn't just the leaking hole and a scene change.
MK says Cho was a paranoid schizophrenic, and she feels somewhat badly for him. The right medication could have prevented the whole thing.
I've read everything in the newspapers now, and I just found out that Cho was repeatedly watching Oldboy, one of my favorite movies, up until the big day. An article in the newspaper pointed out that the pictures he sent to NBC were poses from Oldboy, and it's true, the hammer pose and the gun-to-head pose. I also keep a hammer under my mattress. That's for self-defense though.
War and Peace is also very violent right now. There were no good old days.
I wonder where all the spirits go!! I want to know what happens, I don't believe this many people (since the beginning of time!) could live and care so much about themselves and their little existences, and then just be gone forever??
War and Peace is also being very Buddhist right now. I can't really explain it though. The progress of the war is not controlled by Napoleon or Kutuzov but has an independent course and identity, and Tolstoy keeps showing how the wiser approach, Kutuzov's, is to listen to that force and accept all events and flow with it, guiding by doing nothing. Also, history is shown to be the culmination of wills and actions of all the individuals alive at any point, never shaped by one supposedly powerful person, although it often appears that way in retrospect because historians want a clear, reasonable story.
I was very much interested in Cho's morale tirade, his preaching. Obviously, this trait in certain killers is one I identify with although I'm not violent, but it's why I like the movie Seven and Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and even Saw, although thought that wasn't as good, and all other violent movies about revenge and vengeance (which the Asian filmakers do best). Why is it that psycho people care about morals the most? I liked hearing how Cho said (to his roommate) that he had gone to see a girl "to see if she was as cool as she seemed," but "when he looked in her eyes, he saw promiscuity." Oh shit! I wonder if he really saw that, or rather whether it was really there. Dr. Karam will say no, he was mentally illin'. But I wonder ... it always seems to me the psychotics have a few good points. I also dislike debauchery and rich kids, like Cho. It seems like mentally ill people often get into very religious things, and why is that? I wonder if they are open to something, the part of God that is vengeance. Of course the actions are horrible, I'm not saying anyone who was killed by him deserved it, that's crazy. I'm just asking what makes that kind of disorder, and why do I feel sympathy for it? My mom would say because the world is sinful and we need Jesus to forgive and God to judge, and without Jesus and God, we all deserve death and hell. Well, she wouldn't emphasize the death and hell, but the justice of God's judgement and depth of Jesus love.
This weekend I interview at least five more potential roommates. Everyone I meet is okay, but I dread sharing the space. Michelle Hell is helly jelly over the hypothetical new roommate, that means jealous. Isn't that cute? Jealous of the poor sucker who moves in with me and gets to watch me be boring and bored and doing nothing but writing in my journal or sitting on the couch listening to NPR and eating leftover takeout.
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