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The dark time was roasted by hailstones and flames.
The bright time was wiped out by a shadow.

There’s nothing I can do; there’s nothing I can do. Checking the news every five minutes does no one any good. Ripping off Robyn Hitchcock lyrics does no one any good. Giggling madly at slips of the lip in a global gamble with 10-million-people-at-risk-of-starvation chips does no one any good. Listening to the news choppers circle downtown and wondering acidly if the Burnside Free State will rise again tonight does no one any good. Grandly proclaiming that having lost what mattered to very real people we have won what matters to dreams and ideals is doing no one any good. —At least, it’s not doing me any good. Juliet, quoting a 4,000-year-old lament for the fall of Sumer and Urim? I don’t know if it did her any good. I don’t know if it’s doing me any good, though in a way I am—what? Grateful?

Such a little word.

There’s too much history in the air. Twelve years, three presidential terms ago, give or take a couple of months, we were all huddled around a TV in an unheated room in a big old Boston house, watching the bombs drop.There’s a mad sketch we all did, passing a big black sketchbook back and forth, watching that one guy, the human CNN guy, shocked and awed and scared out of his mind, reporting from downtown Baghdad. He went away after a day or so and was summarily replaced by a smug, blowdried little toad with an utterly improbable name. We laughed at him, because it was either that or scream at the phlegmatic silver-haired stentorians insisting, you know, that they just don’t value human life the way we do. And another turn about the widening gyre and here we are again. Deja vu, jamais vu. I know this place, though I have never been here before. I do not know this place, though I have been here many times. (This time? This time, will we finally fall from the lip of one interpenetrating, whirling cone to the apex of the other?)

Hunger filled the city like water, it would not cease.
This hunger contorted people’s faces, twisted their muscles.
Its people were as if drowning in a pond,
they gasped for breath.
Its king breathed heavily in his palace, all alone.
Its people dropped their weapons,
their weapons hit the ground.
They struck their necks with their hands and cried.
They sought counsel with each other,
they searched for clarification:
“Alas, what can we say about it?
What more can we add to it?
How long until we are finished off by this catastrophe?”

I’m going to unplug this thing and kick it in the corner for a bit. Metaphorically, understand. I’ll just be over yonder a ways. Talk amongst yourselves.

  1. Cowboy Kahlil    Mar 21, 02:46 pm    #
    I sure know the feeling. Backm then, I was massed with others around the Federal building, in Eugene, part of the nationwide 14% opposing THAT war. One group spontaneously marched up to a Freeway entrance and continued.... all were arrested.

    Back at the Fed bldg, yayhoos were on one side of the street and kept coming across, to strike at the pro-peace crowd. One newsman, observing how slow the police were to break such altercations, was radicalized by that event. From then on, he was a reliable go-to guy who showed concern for all subsequent human rights events.

    The national media has no soul, but elsewhere, there are small flickers of hope. Keep the faith & kill the TV!

  2. Mark    Mar 22, 10:04 pm    #
    Come back soon, ok? I'll (we'll) miss your writing while you're gone. Eloquence, elegance, and emotion...gets you every time.

  3. Kevin Moore    Mar 23, 07:12 am    #
    Beautiful post, Kipster.

    My sense of deja vu is overwhelmed by hair-raised dumbfoundedness at the live coverage of battle provided by the embedded reporters. When a few years ago I could see live images of the surface of Mars on my computer, that was thrilling. Watching US marines confront a Republican Gaurd unit while some British reporter babbles on as I get ready for bed is...scary, postmodern, cognitively dissonant, fascinating, repelling, awe-inspiring, utterly sad, painful, fearful, confusing, eventually mundane. And I could not escape a twinge of guilt for having the luxury to turn it all off and go to bed while soldiers on both sides remained locked in a deadly situation, unable to dissipate the "fog of war" and recognize their common humanity.

  4. Blargblog    Mar 23, 08:22 pm    #
    This Week's Cartoon 3/24/03
    It should come as no surprise that this week's cartoon takes on media coverage of the war. Only a few

  5. Ampersand    Mar 24, 11:57 am    #
    I still have that sketchbook, somewhere... but where? Now I want to see that page, but I have no idea what box the old sketchbooks are in.

  6. Amy S.    Mar 24, 01:51 pm    #
    Corny though it might seem, I actually found this very helpful. Who knows, maybe you will, too:


    http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15441

    "...In the fight against apartheid, we saw times that seemed the world had come to an end. The nation wept in 1993 with the assassination of Chris Hani, the widely popular leader who many thought would succeed Nelson Mandela as head of the African National Congress (ANC). Violence clenched South Africa. The constitutional negotiations between the ANC and the whites-only National Party were broken nearly beyond repair.

    This was the lowest point of our struggle. But faith prevailed, as did the moral fortitude of average people to do what is right. With it, apartheid ended.

    In today's moment of deep anguish over the war, it is important to recognize the reasons for hope and pride, both in the United States and across the globe.

    Never in history has there been such an outpouring of resistance from average people all around the world before a war had even begun. Millions took a stand. This doctrine of moral and popular preemption must be sustained.

    Countless nations, many of them quite impoverished, listened to the majority voices of their own citizens opposing the war. These governments opted not to take the huge sums offered to support the military effort, but instead chose to heed the sentiments of their citizens. In these contexts, this was a considerable step forward for democracy..."

    That's Desmond Tutu and Ian Urbina. I found it courtesy the fine people at:

    http://citizenworks.org/issues/iraq.php

    Chin up, you mad, pretentious, beautiful thing you.

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