7.14.2011

An Unnatural Death

7.14.11.NYC

An Unnatural Death

America and all of Brooklyn is a flood in tears over the body of the small boy Leiby Kletzky. Straight from a gory novel, he was abducted and butchered by a man Aron Levi. The missing persons report fliers that filled my neighborhood and all of New York City were taped nailed and posted everywhere. They now stand as haunting ghosts in an infinitely incomprehensible nightmarish tragedy gone terribly real. Alien to the experience of the average person of decency and compassion this is no act of a human being, a monster they say. They ask, "Why?", but there are no real answers to be found but the real horror of it all which is that the man is human and he is one of us. This sends chills to the bone as we are confronted with ourselves, that piece of human nature we often keep beneath the surface buried below in the murky depths. I am sadly reminded in these cases that our race is capable of absolute love, beauty, high art and charity and we are also capable of worse as if to balance a scale we can sink to the darkest levels and still be all too human. I cry for the boy Leiby Kletzky and his family. I cry for the man Aron Levi and I cry for all of humanity.