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 When Anne and I lived in Russia, I was kidnaped by Cossacks. They
made me watch a home video of their part in the war in Chechnya. It included footage of
a guy getting shot about 10 feet from the cameraman. He jerked a couple of times as the
bullets slammed into his body. Then he crumpled slowly to the ground. It was weird to
see. It was like the tendons were all removed, stripping the bones of their support
system, and the skin just collapsed with the falling bones. He laid in the shattered,
debris-strewn street as a pool of blood poured out of his chest and stomach. His
comrades couldn't get to him, because the sniper kept firing at anyone who showed his
head. I was in total shock. I was completely numb. My only reaction was to ask for a
cigarette. When I started to feel about it, I choked the feelings deep, because I was
not going to let Sergeant-Major Puzikov of the All-Cossack Army see me have an emotion.
After the disagreement that had gotten me in trouble was resolved, I puked in the
courtyard. I spent the next few weeks choking back vomit. I still haven't really had
an emotion about it. I don't think there is an emotion to have about it. I used to be
bothered by my lack of emotion, but what I saw is so far out of what is normal
experience (or so far out of what should be normal experience), that we don't really
have an emotional structure set up for it.
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