Whisper; touch everywhere;
T H R E E
In January 1965
(Age 18)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage, from the
ancient Greek. I found this in Paul Tillich, although I like
Martin Buber better because I believe in pure love, I-Thou,
love without boundaries or categories or conditions or
making someone less than you are; not treating people like
they are foreign or lower or things, I-It. Prejudice is I-It and
hate is I-It and treating people like dirt is I-It. In Europe only
boys are named Andrea, Andre, Andreus, but m y mother
didn’t know that and so I got named Andrea because she
thought it was pretty. Philosophy comes from Europe but
poetry comes from America too. I was born down the street
from Walt Whitman’s house, on M ickle Street in Cam den,
N ew Jersey, in 1946, after the bomb. I’m not sad but I wish
everyone didn’t have to die. Everyone will burn in a split
second, even less, they w o n ’t even know it but I bet it will hurt
forever; and then there will be nothing, forever. I can’t stand it
because it could be any second at all, just even this second now
or the next one, but I try not to think about it. I fought it for
a while, when I had hope and when I loved everyone, I-Thou,
not I-It, and I suffered to think they would die. When I was
fourteen I refused to face the wall during a bomb drill. T hey
would ring a bell and we all had to file out o f class, in a line, and
stand four or five deep against a wall in the hall and you had to
put your hands behind your head and your elbows over your
ears and it hurt to keep your arms like that until they decided
the bomb wasn’t coming this time. I thought it was stupid so I
wouldn’t do it. I said I wanted to see it coming if it was going
to kill me. I really did want to see it. O f course no one would
see it coming, it was too fast, but I wanted to see something, I
wanted to know something, I wanted to know that this was it
and I was dying. It would just be a tiny flash o f a second, so
small you couldn’t even imagine it, but I wanted it whatever it
was like. I wanted my whole life to go through m y brain or to
feel m yself dying or whatever it was. I didn’t want to be facing
a wall pretending tomorrow was coming. I said it outraged
m y human dignity to have my elbows over m y ears and be
facing a wall and just waiting like an asshole when I was going
to die; but they didn’t think fourteen-year-olds had any
human dignity and you weren’t allowed to say asshole even
the minute before the bomb came. They punished me or
disciplined me or whatever it is they think they’re doing when
they threaten you all the time. The bomb was coming but I
