by Janet Levine
I’ve long been a fierce opponent of the death penalty. No matter how horrific the crime, I’ve always been a believer that if you lay down with dogs you get up with flies. In other words, killing someone for his or her crime makes you no better than the criminal. But lately, I’ve been having some second thoughts.
Yesterday, while walking through the Parco Monte Mario in Rome where I am traveling—already on edge from the visual assault of all the graffiti, everywhere in this Eternal City—I found myself both elated by the beauty and distraught over the vandalism, the litter and yes, that ever-present graffiti.
These people should be shot, I thought. Alas, it wasn’t the first time such a thought has occurred to me. In LA where I live, I frequently find myself appalled and worse at the blatant disregard for our city. I live around a park, and despite the presence of trash pails every few feet, in the mornings when I take my dogs for a walk, I am constantly confronted and affronted by the debris: fast food wrappers, bottles, cigarette butts, and assorted other trash.
At least at home there is an effort to clean things up. And over the past dozen years, the graffiti issue has lessened. Still, it wears on me.
Perhaps if the graffiti were pretty. Or interesting. At the very least, if it didn’t obscure interesting architectural lines or information it would be helpful to have. But none of the above is true, and so I find my thoughts turning as ugly as what I am finding so abhorrent. And what can you say about the wanton destruction of lampposts, park benches, windows, and more?
In Rome, the problem seems to be worse. My husband calls this the “land of the broken escalator.” It is also the land of parks overgrown with weeds (or when some particular point has been reached, weed-whacked into a barren desert), beautiful buildings gone to ruin, abandoned appliances and defaced walls.
I feel something shrivel inside of me. Worse, I am angry. I want to punish them. I think it is the selfishness, the arrogance, perhaps the pure spitefulness that makes my blood boil. And again I think about how appropriate it would be to deface them, these perpetrators of such heinous visual aggression. Death, I think, may be justified.
Ah, I know I am overreacting. Execution does seem a bit excessive. And what, really, would it solve? Maybe, I think, whack off their hands so they can no longer destroy. Or take out their eyes, so they can see no beauty. But they don’t see it now, so that would not stop the destruction.
What would be onerous enough to give these destroyers pause? I run through the usual punishments, rejecting all. And then, and then I know. It would be perfect. Make them clean up the mess they’ve made.
1 comment:
I could so identify with this. There are low-income apartments not too far from my home. On many occasions, I've seen children and adults in that area throw trash in their yards or on the street, as if that is where it belongs. I grew up on "spit and polished" military bases, and when I've seen someone throw their trash into our "outdoor living spaces," I've been known to say something, not too kindly I'm afraid -- it is an assault to my senses.
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