The soul and mind ignite when artists and activists come together for a cause. In this case, on Sunday evening, it was to peacefully protest two unsettling topics — fascism and gun violence. Idyllwild Indivisible and Idyllwild Poets came together at “Harmony,” the town monument, with community members, young and elderly, to express compassion and peace for the country’s current, fragile state.
Five Idyllwild Poets — Myra Dutton, Ken Luber, Trine Bietz, Holly Parsons, and Rena May — wrote pieces for the event.
Dutton began, “Trump has definitely created a storm of hatred. It’s a recurrence in history, which is amazing enough that these things occur.”
How much pain does one have to be in to commit such an act of violence? The poets wrote and read about active shooter drills and children being held in horrific conditions away from their parents and how the elite keep the status quo. They also spoke heavily of love and voices coming together for peace and change. One of the most important messages, given by May, is the power of your voice and words and how they are far from insignificant.
“ … To access new ways of dealing with old problems such as patriarchy, pedophilia, possession and power over paradigms. Confidential indeed,” read Bietz from her poem.
History and violence are long intertwined.
“The history of our lives is the history of violence,” Luber said in regards to today’s active shooter drills and the nuclear bomb drills of his day.
The main message of the evening: We continue to lose children — infants, toddlers and teenagers — adults and elderly. We are placing children in tiny caskets and burying them in tiny plots in the ground. They do not get the tombstone that reads “beloved mother, wife, sister and daughter.” They will never be a parent, spouse or older sibling.
Their parents take their tiny hands in their hands as they say goodbye far, far too soon. Those books and stuffed animals, and those toys shoved in the crate will remain lonely because the child that once played with them is no longer alive. Instead, those toys will sit there and collect dust until someone decides it is time to pack them away.
And all of this happened because an individual was too depressed, or hateful or angry and thought it was OK to take that child away … or multiple children away or take parents or siblings away.
Any way you look at it, the pain is causing more pain. And until we deal with why there is pain, the pain will continue, and more parents will continue to kiss the faces of their deceased children while holding their tiny hands before they bury them in a grave marked by a tombstone that doesn’t say nearly enough.