imagine if

don’t shoot

don’t shoot
Written by Cathoel Jorss,

Jeez, America, stop shooting each other. At least in Australia we only drown refugee babies, jail children, beat young Indigenous men to death in jail cells with phone books.

I am thinking today of the Albanian security guard who came out of her way to welcome us to the Cloisters, a museum in Tryon Park which seems to have salvaged all the bits of bombed-out churches and cathedrals in Europe that had survived, as splinters, the War to Unending War. We saw the daunting entry price and had retreated to the entrance hall to confer. “We have our tours available in German,” she told my companion, twinklingly. Then, turning to me, the Australian, “I’m not sure we have anything available in your language.”

18 comments on “don’t shoot

  1. Cathoel Jorss says:

    The badge: the tiniest shield.

  2. Cathoel Jorss says:

    Yes, Rich, it could well be this is the difficulty we are experiencing downunder. A want of efficiency.

  3. Cathoel Jorss says:

    We did! The Albanian security guard also pointed out to us that the $25 entry fee was ‘recommended.’ She said, you can pay a dollar, if you like. I thought of you when we were there, Cynthia, it seemed somehow your kind of place. Now I wonder how incredible it feels that our two shades have passed in the same soft monument.

  4. Cathoel Jorss says:

    That, and eat some of our famous strudel.

  5. Cathoel Jorss says:

    This is a really good question, Cynthia. And in Australia at least, tasers seem to have been used to justify and increase brutality, to make it more convenient and excusable, as a supplement rather than a replacement for other guns. They’re just a weapon.

  6. Cathoel Jorss says:

    Yup the Cloisters is in Tryon Park, top of Manhattan. The photo was on a bus back from 207th St. I just loved the superimposition on the flag. Like it has always had these instructions embedded in invisible ink.

  7. Cathoel Jorss says:

    Preach.

  8. Stephen 'Dumb Bull Heart' Cole says:

    It will never stop!

  9. Cathoel Jorss says:

    Not until the last surviving three-year-old shoots his two-year-old sister in the face as they’re trying to throw all the guns into the clogged dead sea, surrounded by piles of bleeding corpses.

    I find that Charlton Heston said it best: his gun will have to be pried from his “cold, dead heart.” I mean, hand.

  10. RoughAcres says:

    You came to the Cloisters???

    I live just down the street!!!

  11. Cathoel Jorss says:

    Wow, are you kidding Rita? Oh, that feels… Well, how good it would have been to see you that day. You would have had to tag along, we didn’t stop from morning til night. Took the subway right up to the end at 207th St so I could see Spuytens Duvel. Picked blackberries. Hiked down through the park among the squirrels. Wandered in Washington Heights a ways, for like, 6 minutes. It was rushy, humid, but glorious. I will be back in September I hope, let us organise ourselves for then. I’d so love to meet you.

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