Went out and shot a bunch of pictures the other day and have been thinking about the process of “framing” Vietnam, of putting my experiences here into various sorts of contexts and relationships, especially with my life as someone from outside the culture. This concern is particularly important because I’m about to return home and teach students who have never been here about the place. How I frame the country for them will influence the ways in which they frame it for themselves, or shift the makeshift frames they have picked up from American popular culture.

William George Eckhardt, the chief prosecutor in the My Lai cases, said Friday he was unaware of Calley ever apologizing before. Eckhardt said that when he first heard the news, “I just sort of cringed.” ”It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people,” said Eckhardt, now a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “But at least there’s an acknowledgment of responsibility.”

And while I would have liked to hear a more unequivocal statement from Calley, I have to say I appreciate his long silence and the modest setting for his first public discussion (since his trial) of his actions at My Lai. He should no go back to being quiet, as silence from him is the only adequate response. Two things: In order to live with myself, I have to believe in the possibility of redemption, of turning away from evil, in others; also, he was in fact a scapegoat: Colin Powell, Captain Ernest Medina, and others were equally responsible for the murders of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. This second point does not lessen Lt. Calley’s responsibility, but it puts it in context. So, I accept his apology, at least provisionally. The effects of his actions continue to ripple outward through the histories of both Vietnam and the US and, paradoxically, out of evil some understanding can emerge.

But what I really wonder about is that “standing ovation” the Kiwanis gave the aging William Calley. What was that about? When I was in high school, before the My Lai massacre, some of us graduating seniors were given dinner by the local Kiwanis and then lectured by a congressman about our duty to be “patriotic,” which was framed in terms of supporting the Vietnam war. I got up and left. (I didn’t wait for the standing ovation.) Were the Kiwanis who listened to Calley applauding his courage for admitting he committed murder in their service? That seems unlikely to me. Were they subtly applauding the murder, excusing it? Perhaps that is too harsh a judgement. I suspect they were applauding their own sense of relief: Well, that’s finally behind us. Maybe William Calley believes he can put it behind him and in a sense he can, by keeping quiet and doing good. To the Kiwanis, I’d say: Don’t let yourselves off the hook so easily. Lt. Calley served in your army — in our army — and he acted in our names; so, while, yes, the event is behind us, it is still there. The murdered are still murdered. Going forward, that is what we bear.

Hutchinson says much of what I would say about Carruth. I was surprised to see that we had both come from Blake’s poems to our modern master. Also, it has been Carruth’s existentialism that hs kept me coming back to him. People look at you funny — I know — if you tell them you’re an existentialist, but that’s what I am. Carruth’s humanity & that his poetry emerged fiercely from love have struck me all over again as I have read through the volume of longer poems over the last few months.

Beautiful weather today — nearly cloudless sky, a little cool this morning but promising warmth by afternoon. The forcast says the next couple of days will be the same. I haven’t really minded the rainy days we’ve had since I’m not a big hiker, boater or swimmer (I’m a walker); but the sparkling lake this morning is a joy.

Reading: Hayden Carruth’s Collected Shorter Poems, John Dewey’s Art as Experience, William Barrett’s The Illusion of Technique, Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air, & John Ashbery’s Notes from the Air. About half of this is new reading, half things I’ve read before. Naturally, in my reading & in my own work I’m still fussing with the relationship between word & thing, mind & world. I’ve been fussing at these issues since I was eighteen, so why should I stop now? This is certainly a lovely place for such fussing.

I wonder how many other of the small contributors to the Obama campaign are beginning to feel as I do. I wonder who the Obama campaign thought was sending in all those contributions during the primaries. I think a lot of them were people like me, with politics similar to mine. I wonder if the contributions will keep coming. Mine won’t. I will vote for Obama in the fall, but I will do so without enthusiasm, conviction, or hope.