jamelah.net

Thursday, March 20, 2003

we interrupt your regularly-scheduled programming....

last night i was watching t.v., not because i was waiting for some sort of iraq update, but because sometimes i watch t.v. it's a good thing to do when you're sick and incapable of any sort of mental output. so i was dozing through star search only to be interrupted by dan rather. first of all, let me say that man, dan rather is starting to look scary. definitely not someone i want to wake up to ever again.

anyway, he said that alarms had gone off in baghdad, and then showed a picture of the city before sunrise. nothing seemed to be happening, and i began drifting more and more into consciousness, listening to the drone of the newsmen analyzing the nothing i was seeing. then came the lights in the sky and the explosions, one after another, bam, bam, bam. i was awake then, listening to the commentary telling me that this wasn't the real thing... just a strike on some "target of opportunity", and that the actual war probably wouldn't get going for 24-48 hours. oh, i remember thinking, the real war starts later.

for some crazy reason, i kept wishing the sunrise over baghdad would be beautiful, like nature's spite: go ahead and launch your missiles; i will be lovely anyway. but it wasn't beautiful, and i hated myself for hating it.

i'm still torn over this war. i wish it weren't happening, but i have no illusions. my wishes have nothing to do with how the world is run. i keep wondering about the people i know who are over there, or will be over there soon. i want to light candles for them. i want them to come home. i want to understand the purpose of all this. i want to know that the people who will die aren't just dying for lower gas prices. i want to know something, but none of this makes any sense. people talk concepts, like peace, or the eradication of evil, or the liberation of the iraqi people, but it's all just talk. the people over there who are living and dying... that's what's real. but what does it mean? i want to know, and i'm frustrated because i don't think i can.

and today is the first day of spring. i've always loved spring, because it means new life and new beginnings. and what a strange thing, in the middle of all this focus on death.





posted by jamelah
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