Memorials...
Jazz great Max Roach disappeared for a year or so after Clifford Brown died at the age of 25 in a car accident (along with Bud Powell). Today dropping packages off at a local UPS, I noticed an ornate tattoo along the young shipping clerk's forearm of praying hands (as well as crude tattoos on his neck and fingers). I managed to glimpse the words "In memory" but not the name. Makes me think of the ways in which we memorialize (when the loss is catastrophic) our outer skin, a tree, the empty spaces along our highways. The same spaces (veins, arteries, branches).

Reminded me too of this past week's New Yorker publication of Iraq war GI emails. For many, the guilt they carry — at allowing friends to die (where there was no choice) or leaving friends behind to face uncertain death — is the way they will memorialize what they have lost. It is an unbearable way to keep memory kindled.

Maybe the shipping clerk has been a victim of private wars .. the kind the occur inside of houses and in neighborhoods, suffering the carnage of social disintegration. This is no doubt different than witnessing a body dismantled, gore everywhere, children dying. Nevertheless, he too cannot let go, so he has marked himself externally, visibly, although he likely needs no reminder. Guilt there too plays a role.