Imagination and Place

The other night I watched a movie that based on the murder of 5 people by two women in Lexington, Kentucky (100 Proof.) If you read the accounts of the murder in the paper, you'll see that money is given as the motive. As a fictionalized account, the movie can offer other reasons and one in particular struck me the most. I think the women suffered from a lack of imagination. Clearly, the women wanted to somehow escape from their violent, banal and bleak existence where both women and men are sexual predators. Although the less aggressive of the two talks about owning a country store out in the country, it's clear that they can't imagine another way to live. Rather than use their minds to pull themselves out of the violence which surrounds them, they use drugs and alcohol to find oblivion.

The day after viewing the movie I was able to enjoy an afternoon in our local art museum. While looking at the scuplture of a Buddha in the museum framed by the Minneapolis cityscape, I wondered what those two women would have thought if transported to the same place as I stood. And then I wondered while looking at the Buddha if it really mattered where they were. If they learned the power of meditation, could they transform their place into something as inspirational as the art museum?