The Power of Ten - Armando García-Dàvila

[Larry Robinson]

The Power of Ten

One hundred stories reduced to a pile of ten. Two mountains of financial power reduced to a heap of shattered glass twisted steel, pulverized concrete, ash.  

The hopes of millions reduced to finding a handful of survivors. The nightmare images of red explosions, black smoke and a surreal gray landscape; what do we do with them?  What do they do to us?

Stars and stripe flags the size of bed sheets mounted onto rattling Chevy and Ford pickups as if nationalism could displace the shame of not owning enough in the land of too much.

For the angry, a place to hurl it; for the compassionate, a place to set it, for emergency medical technicians, a place to find hope in pulling breathing flesh like newborns from dead buildings.

One hundred stories reduced to a pile of ten. Fifty states reduced to a handful of acres in one city.  A cruel harvest from the secret lies sown by our fathers.

To you who sweat in factories for slave wages from China to Mexico, Malaysia to Panama and Sri Lanka, making our Christmas toys, sewing logos on our designer clothes, your taskmaster has been kicked in the groin. 

To those in desperate search for family members holding their photos like the mothers of the disappeared of Chile’s regime that we installed, we hurt for you as we do for the Iraqi children in the bomb shelter; casualties of our “surgical strikes,” as we hurt for the terrified Palestinian child killed in the crossfire, as we hurt for the Jewish mother killed on the exploding bus, for you of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, too many places to list even on a hundred pages.

To you who died for your cause by flying airliners into the towers. Thank you for giving a nation in desperate need a moment of reflection, a moment of sobriety from its addiction to the material world. Thank you for bringing, if only for a moment, unity to a fractured society. Thank you for allowing us to know so many whom we would have never known otherwise and a chance to mourn with them. Thank you for allowing the quiet heroes who rose to the occasion to save lives, to donated blood, to donate from their earnings. Thank you for having reminded us of just how much we truly love our families and communities. 

One hundred stories reduced to a smoldering heap of ten. Oh, but the ten thousand fold gardens that have grown from it.	   	   	           	  


	- Armando García-Dàvila