MOLON LABE
Very early this lovely Sunday morning, around 6:30, I walked one of my big Newfy dogs around the neighborhood. She’s young and wakes up early, ready to go DO THINGS. So I grab coffee and we go out to DO in the first light. The ospreys are flying, the redwoods tower majestically, the air is crisp, the chikeree squirrels make their squeaky door noises, my pup noses at every third bush deciphering the paths of the night creatures that had passed by.
Parked at a nearby construction site there’s a shiny new truck with big studded tires and a couple dozen two by fours in the back. No one is around, the house is buttoned up for the holiday weekend, it doesn’t appear that anyone is working there. The truck is imposing and fancy, so I give it the once-over as we walk past.
The back window has a redwhite&blue decal of a Mohawk headdress with faux Greek lettering: MOLON LABE. Oh. The response of the Spartans to the Persians at Thermopylae: “COME AND TAKE THEM”. Today it is Second Amendment fanatics who say this.
Molon Labe was spoken in a time of war. The guns these modern Second Amendment people want to keep are weapons of war. This person claims Molon Labe as their personal statement: They are at war.
I had not really contemplated/formulated the idea that we are war. But we are, of course.
I am, in so many simple ways, the enemy.
Like the unknown truck fellow, we have signs on our gate showing who we are: NEVER AGAIN IS NOW. CHINGA LA MIGRA with Guadalupe in chains. WORST ANCESTORS EVER. And the 3 language sign WHERE EVER YOU’RE FROM WE ARE GLAD YOU ARE OUR NEIGHBOR.
We continued our walk down to the river. My pup ran a little ways and came back to sit at my feet as I smoked a cigarette. We – me and my pup – talked slowly about being in the middle of a war that we’d not yet acknowledged. And that we didn’t know how to – well, quite how to proceed. How to prepare, how to protect what is good and sweet and vital.
Kurt Vonnegut’s quote is on our gate too: Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”