VN AfterTaste

Rachel Corrie died March 16, 2003 when an Israeli bulldozer ran her over. According to Wikipedia, “the details of the events surrounding Corrie’s death are disputed.” What is not disputed is that Rachel Corrie, of Olympia Washington, is dead. The cause of death was being run over by an Israeli bulldozer while she was protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip.Afterwards, Billy Bragg wrote a song about her. A play, “My name is Rachel Corrie” was produced in London, New York, and even Israel. A book of the same name was published. None of these are the reason I remember Rachel Corrie.

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In May of 2003 I was walking in downtown Olympia with Tim McBride, a local musician. We were distributing flyers for a show. Toward the end we walked by the park at Capitol Lake, directly underneath the state capital. There was a giant tent set up there in memorial. I hadn’t been downtown in months. I had also not been paying a lot of attention to the news, for various reasons. I knew someone from Olympia had died in the Gaza Strip. I didn’t recognize the name. I remember the loose hay strewn on the ground. We went in to give them flyers. Inside the tent were a few tables and some people. There were also some pictures of Rachel Corrie. I recognized her immediately.

When I was six or seven years old, we had a huge sandbox in front of my house. It wasn’t really a sandbox — it was a place where a cement slab was going to be poured, but hadn’t been poured, and wouldn’t for several years. Thus, it was a large sandbox. A friend of my mother’s brought over her daughter one day. She also brought a friend of her daughter. We were all about the same age. We spent the afternoon in the sandbox, which wasn’t really a sandbox, yet was. I never saw this other girl again. I know that, weeks later, she ran into traffic, was hit by a car, then died. No one told me this. I overheard my mother speaking to her friend on the phone. There is no other reason I would still remember this girl who I spent a few hours with when I was seven years old. Why would you remember it otherwise? It’s a completely random memory. Nothing happened. What did happen happened later.

Therefore, it is not the memory of what happened that is memorable but the memory of the events surrounding the meeting. A memory of a retrospective loss. As the great American standup-tragedian Brother Theodore once proclaimed, “Only what we have lost forever do we ever truly possess.”

Roughly a year before Rachel Corrie died I went to a local political meeting. It was a group I had been involved with, at a time when I was involved heavily with such groups. It was the last meeting of that group I ever went to. I knew when I went there it would be the last time. I had no intention of coming back. I was just finishing up loose ends. The meeting was more of the same frustration lessened by the fact that I was no longer truly involved. Across the table from me and to my right was one person in the room who I had never seen before. She was the only person in the room who I didn’t know. It was my last meeting and her first, though I don’t know if she ever came back. I don’t remember her saying all that much. I know that she did speak, I just have no recollection of what she said. I know it had nothing to do with the incessant infighting plaguing the group, a main reason I was leaving. This, if nothing else, endeared her to me. In fact, I concentrated more on her then any of the topics on hand. That is the only way I got through the meeting. When it was over I thought about talking to her, but I didn’t want anything drawing me back into the circle. So I left. I left with a sense of relief, put it out of my mind, and never really thought about it again.

When I saw her picture I recognized her immediately. I once spent two hours sitting across from Rachel Corrie and now she’s dead.
The thing is, I shouldn’t remember her at all. The time I met Rachel Corrie was actually the time I failed to meet Rachel Corrie. I thought about talking to her but I didn’t. Between the time I sat across from her and the time I saw her picture in her memorial tent I had not thought about her at all. Why would I? She was just a girl I didn’t talk to. That is the reason I will always remember Rachel Corrie.