to us? Yes. Without question. Were our guards correct in their actions? Again, certainly. But the larger issue we face is this; was it right ?
No, I don't think it was. Necessary, but not the right thing to do. It would have been more risky for our people to duck below the walls and wait to see if the people outside fired at them, but at least there would have been a chance for those poor souls. That would have been right--but dangerous and risky. We teach people not to do dangerous things unless they have to. To minimize the danger by being cautious and proactive when threatened.
Ahh, Damn it. How can you reconcile something like this? Our people did the best they could in a fast and dangerous situation, and some innocent people who probably couldn't think clearly are dead as a result. Innocent kids are dead right along with them. No one was right or wrong, in the end. It was a thing that happened. A tragic thing, but one that I don't think could have been avoided.
It's a terrible morning, a sad one. Some days this world mostly empty of the living seems so much darker than others. Today seems to be all shadows.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Dreams
Posted by Josh Guess
Last night, Jess and I watched a movie. Not something we do often, mind you, but the house batteries were at full charge after a long, sunny day, and my laptop has a DVD player.
It was something to take our minds off yesterday's events. Everyone around the compound is feeling a little down that those people were killed. We gave them a proper burial, even though a team of guards had to go out into the group of zombies outside the gate to secure the bodies. Also, to take steps ensuring that the dead people from the firefight didn't come back themselves...
It felt like the right thing to do, burying them. It's a sad consequence of our need to protect our home that those people died, and the least we could do was honor their deaths by giving them some of our time and effort.
Afterward, the wife and I watched Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams".
Somehow in the nearly six years Jess and I have been together, I've never gotten her to watch it before. She'd never seen any of Kurosawa's films, and I'm a huge fan. I've got a few of them sitting around, and I decided on "Dreams" for a very simple reason: it is beautiful in every frame.
I'm not going to go off on a tangent about the director's brilliance or the influence Kurosawa had in the film industry. None of those things matter any more. Watching the film, from the opening sequence with the Kitsune in the forest to the final part showing the old man fixing the waterwheel and the funeral procession after, I realized something of almost overwhelming importance.
Last year, when I posted about the unfinished books out there, singling out "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan and "The Kingkiller Chronicles" by Patrick Rothfuss, I touched on the truth that hit me full force last night.
One of my all time favorite quotes is from Alan Moore's "Watchmen". It is this--"I am looking at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us. All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."
The realization that hit me? It's that watching movies, reading books, talking about cars...anything that has to do with the world as it was before the zombie plague destroyed humanity is just opening up the shoebox full of memories and looking through the pictures of times that can never come again. Yes, we aim to make something new and better...but we can't let go of what was.
"Dreams" really made me think. Kurosawa made the film out of many dreams he had experienced over a lifetime, and you can see the growth of his spirit and character from one sequence to the next. How he left behind things he once considered important in order to move on to new frontiers and goals. Part of me recognized the futility in holding on to my favorite books and movies while the rest of me recognized the deep
No, I don't think it was. Necessary, but not the right thing to do. It would have been more risky for our people to duck below the walls and wait to see if the people outside fired at them, but at least there would have been a chance for those poor souls. That would have been right--but dangerous and risky. We teach people not to do dangerous things unless they have to. To minimize the danger by being cautious and proactive when threatened.
Ahh, Damn it. How can you reconcile something like this? Our people did the best they could in a fast and dangerous situation, and some innocent people who probably couldn't think clearly are dead as a result. Innocent kids are dead right along with them. No one was right or wrong, in the end. It was a thing that happened. A tragic thing, but one that I don't think could have been avoided.
It's a terrible morning, a sad one. Some days this world mostly empty of the living seems so much darker than others. Today seems to be all shadows.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Dreams
Posted by Josh Guess
Last night, Jess and I watched a movie. Not something we do often, mind you, but the house batteries were at full charge after a long, sunny day, and my laptop has a DVD player.
It was something to take our minds off yesterday's events. Everyone around the compound is feeling a little down that those people were killed. We gave them a proper burial, even though a team of guards had to go out into the group of zombies outside the gate to secure the bodies. Also, to take steps ensuring that the dead people from the firefight didn't come back themselves...
It felt like the right thing to do, burying them. It's a sad consequence of our need to protect our home that those people died, and the least we could do was honor their deaths by giving them some of our time and effort.
Afterward, the wife and I watched Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams".
Somehow in the nearly six years Jess and I have been together, I've never gotten her to watch it before. She'd never seen any of Kurosawa's films, and I'm a huge fan. I've got a few of them sitting around, and I decided on "Dreams" for a very simple reason: it is beautiful in every frame.
I'm not going to go off on a tangent about the director's brilliance or the influence Kurosawa had in the film industry. None of those things matter any more. Watching the film, from the opening sequence with the Kitsune in the forest to the final part showing the old man fixing the waterwheel and the funeral procession after, I realized something of almost overwhelming importance.
Last year, when I posted about the unfinished books out there, singling out "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan and "The Kingkiller Chronicles" by Patrick Rothfuss, I touched on the truth that hit me full force last night.
One of my all time favorite quotes is from Alan Moore's "Watchmen". It is this--"I am looking at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us. All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."
The realization that hit me? It's that watching movies, reading books, talking about cars...anything that has to do with the world as it was before the zombie plague destroyed humanity is just opening up the shoebox full of memories and looking through the pictures of times that can never come again. Yes, we aim to make something new and better...but we can't let go of what was.
"Dreams" really made me think. Kurosawa made the film out of many dreams he had experienced over a lifetime, and you can see the growth of his spirit and character from one sequence to the next. How he left behind things he once considered important in order to move on to new frontiers and goals. Part of me recognized the futility in holding on to my favorite books and movies while the rest of me recognized the deep
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