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Kirkpatrick Sale398

IT IS ABSURD FOR SOMEONE TO SAY HE OR SHE DOESN’T BELIEVE in violence. That’s like saying you don’t believe in death. Certainly one can say that one doesn’t want to participate in certain forms of violence, just like one can say that one doesn’t want to cause certain forms of death. But violence, like death, is simply a part of life, no larger nor smaller, no more nor less important than any other. In fact it’s inseparable from the others. We all participate in violence daily. The only questions are our degree of awareness, and what we do with that awareness.399

Tonight I tried to save a wasp. I failed. I was standing in line on a Jetway. The flight had been delayed. Lots of people were cranky. For whatever reason, I wasn’t.

The wasp was beautiful. She was a small hunting wasp, with delicate translucent wings and a body the color of peaches. I saw her long before I got to her. Each person in front of me in line looked at her. I prayed no one would smash her. No one did. I got there. I wanted to reach up and grab her to carry her to the small space between the Jetway and the airplane wall to release her to the outside. But I hesitated, mainly because I didn’t want to be noticed “doing something odd” in line. I wasn’t sure what to do.

I made up my mind when I heard the woman behind me ask her boyfriend, “Can I borrow your shoe?”

I reached up, cupped the wasp in my hand, closed my fingers gently, brought my hand to my chest. People behind me in line gasped. The wasp got out from between my fingers, flew to the ceiling lights. I reached as high as I could, standing on my toes, and missed her again and again. Each time I almost had her, she flew a few inches away.

Finally I had her. Because she was so high that I could not cup her, I had to hold her gently between my thumb and all four fingers. I brought her to my chest.

She stung me. The stings of hunting wasps barely hurt. The venom is meant instead to paralyze spiders or caterpillars, depending on the species of wasp, so she can lay her eggs inside her intended prey. They only sting in defense when all other options are gone, and when they’re terrified.

The sting startled me, and I accidentally let go my grip. She flew back up to the ceiling. The line moved on. I should have stayed back and tried again, but I didn’t. I got on the plane, and hoped she made it out on her own.

In many ways the story of the wasp highlights a distinction between two forms of violence, one of which I evidently didn’t like, and one of which I evidently didn’t care to think about. The former is direct and by omission. It seemed clear to me that if I didn’t do something, this wasp would die, either by being smashed for no good reason by someone wielding a shoe, or by eventually starving or being poisoned in the sterile airport environment. I knew that if I could help her outside she would at least have the chance to make it somewhere away from the concrete and kerosene fumes of the runways, where she might find whole fields of caterpillars or spiders, and where she might find a male wasp eagerly awaiting her attentions. I did not want to stand by and let her die this unnatural death.

The latter—the type of violence I evidently didn’t care to think about—was that I was getting on a plane. If whenever I drive I smash moths against my windshield, I think it’s safe to presume airplanes do the same to wasps (as well as moths, spiders, birds, and everything else that cannot get out of the way of this big metal bullet pushing through the air at several hundred feet per second). And far greater than this is the habitat damage wreaked by the airline, oil, aluminum, electricity, and other industries all necessary to get this thing in the air. I’m sure many fine fields of fat caterpillars and spiders are systematically sacrificed on the sacred altar of air travel. But it’s perhaps better if we don’t speak of that kind of violence, don’t you think?

I don’t want to take this logic too far, however, and suggest that because