Flickr SafeSearch

Flickr SafeSearch blocked my attempt to view this image, which I will post very far down on the page so that you don't have to see it by accident. Eileen reminds me that normal non-EMT people see blood and guts and are inspired to more to nausea and revulsion than morbid curiosity.

At any rate, after verifying with Flickr that yes, in fact, I wanted to actually see this picture (which I was attempting to access after having already seen the picture, posted to an archive of the excellent and thrice-worthy-of-mention Luke's Commonplace Book) I got a picture with a full story--the tragically low arc of this man's life, from his youth on the streets to his adulthood, still on the streets. And, I'm thinking, how can you turn away from this? This is, as one of the commentors put, what "man does to man," and it's become my norm for the world. This is humanity, as I see it, and it's why I post things like this.

So, anyway, there at the top there, Flickr let's you choose to bail out. Eeeeeep! Don't want to see that! Hoy crap! I like my sanitized version of the world, thank you. I don't want to think about people like that, situations like that, crippled kids or those born brain dead or nursing-home-farms or nasty crap. I don't want the ugly stuff of life, just the nice and uplifting. Show me the kittens, baby! It's the new motto for the self-obsessed, the snobbish, the comfortable. Which is, oddly, a lot like shooting up heroin to ignore the sickness and the pain, except that heroin is incredibly addictive biologically, and drowning out the ugly is easier, cheaper, and only psychologically compulsive.

I rant. Here is your picture. This is what the world looks like to me, except add in equal parts Alzheimer's patients in restraints lining the hallways like forgotten children in nursing homes, belligerent and helpless psychiatric patients, 90 year-old grandmothers with bedsores the size of my face in houses with 60-inch flatscreens, and very small, very dead children. And here's a link to the Flickr page, with accompanying story. Sorry, Tegan, if I'm having a hard time hearing God's sweetness and light, lately, he's making such a great effort to be heard above the noise. It's fucked-up-psalm-day, not theological-correctness-psalm-day, maybe i just wanted a hug. And God's not showing up with a lot of those, either.