Tonight on Larry King they spent the whole hour on the horrors of dogs and cats tortured and slaughtered for their coats, mostly in Asia. It was very compelling, and deeply disturbing.  I had to look away a few times, and I’ve seen a lot of horrible images as an advocate for animal welfare. It’s worse on video than it is in the still photos I usually see, though it all has a profound effect on me.

In the most recent issue of Time, there is this article about the puppy mill industry here in the United States.  Lest we forget we are not blameless, just more … industrial.  

It’s not so hard to feel compassionate from time to time, when confronted with sad stories and vivid images of suffering.  God help us to be compassionate all the times in between.

I have some old journals, which I’ve been keeping not too religiously since 1992, as far as I can tell. Now and then, I get one out and type into the computer. Makes it easier to save and search. So if someone asks, When did we get Happy? or When was it we went to Mt. Lassen and played in the snow? I can look it up. Anyway, among the stuff in my journals are snippets of writing that didn’t live long enough to become poetry. There are good reasons for that, but here’s such a thing.

January 8, 1995

I hear you, ticking kitchen clock; and you, humming refrigerator and descant buzz of light bulbs. Not the friends I would have chosen for tonight, but I am not lonely. The honey colored dog is by the sofa, watching me. Keeping watch. Her instinct to protect the flock. And loudest of all tonight’s companions, the washer is draining the soap from my best white shirt.

The rain has stopped for now, and tomorrow is over Europe, coming soon enough.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-Albert Einstein

My Cox cable internet connection is pherked up again. I sat on hold for half an hour to find out I’m “in the affected area.” And apparently nothing is available to clear it up without a prescription. So I’m using AOL to dial up, which is giving me conniptions too.

I’m really beginning to lose faith in postmodern life. Because since there’s nothing on TV, I have nothing to do but read a book. Typed on paper. We’re spiraling in, people, and I wasn’t paying attention when they pointed to the exits.

Aaaargh!  What has gone wrong with western civilization?  There’s nothing – and I mean literally nothing worth a miserable s$^t – worth watching on TV tonight.  Why am I paying ninety bucks a month for cable and internet?  Dang.  I’ll bet there’s nothing on the internet either.  

Going to hell in a bucket.

I don’t understand why the McCain Amendment was even necessary. Who are we becoming that we don’t hold it self-evident that it’s wrong to torture somebody? Aren’t we The Good Guys?

Today is Pearl Harbor day, and I’m reminded that after that event America woke like “a sleeping giant,” and rose up and fought back, and fought clean. I don’t mean perfectly, but proudly. (OK, there was the internment of Japanese Americans, which was pure disgusting sweaty fear, and I acknowledge that.)

There’s a distinct difference these days; we’re fighting out of panic. The Sky is Falling; Damage Report to Follow. Flailing blindly against an enemy that we can barely find and only occasionally kill. I suppose that’s because we’re fighting an emotion – hate – and not a state such as Germany or Japan. We can’t beat them, because an idea, no matter how stupid, can’t surrender and lay down its weapons. There’s nobody to sign an armistice on behalf of Death to America.

I think the only way to stop this wildfire that Bush calls terr’rism is to take away its fuel. We can’t change the people who hate us, so we have to change ourselves. We have: we’ve become a nation terrorized. So they’re winning hands down so far, and it’s not like they’re going to run out of troops and give up. The longer this goes on, the more guys will sign up against us. No, I mean we have to change what they hate about us.

The reason that evil scum like Bin Laden are able to get people to hate us and fight us is that basically what they say about America is true. Our foreign policy is arrogant and thoughtless. We project a shallow greedy, self-interest image to the rest of the world, at the same time we’re sending out shiploads of food and help. Which begs the question: Since we are generous and kind at heart, why do we have a leadership that extends one hand open and keeps the other clinched in a fist? Why did we elect Bush/Cheney, twice?

Because we’re afraid, and we think we need gunfighters to protect us. What we need is to learn compassion. They will know we are good people by our love, when we find leaders who convey love, instead of bald, stupid selfishness. Then there’s no way someone like Bin Laden could raise up an army.

3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.
–1st Corinthians, 13.

I hate it when blogs die. I don’t even know where they go when they do. If you’ve kept one eye on the blogroll on the right there, you’ll note that “My Park Bench” is history. Peter’s fine blog is lost to the blustery zephyrs of serverless oblivion. Can’t link to it because it’s totally gone, not just forgotten. Too bad. I liked his dog, Gadget.

On the bright side, Buzzstuff is back. Don’t miss a chance to catch a favoring wind in cyberspace and visit that one daily.

The internets is a fickle disreality. And everything’s on its way somewhere.

Former President Jimmy Carter, a man whom I admire unreservedly, has published his 20th book, Our Endangered Values.  He was on The Daily Show tonight, speaking with a sharpness of mind that belies his age.  I’m putting this book on my wish list, Santa.

“There is just this moment when it might happen, if I can make it happen,” he thinks. “Just this small window of opportunity, then nothing. Because next time everything is lined up like this – the chance to do it and the weather perfect – well, I might not even be in the world. I mean the wind is from the south now, through the windows, along the peak of the roof and against the hills. Which is fine. But if it makes a hard turn and comes from the west, God knows it might be just too late.”

He paces the living room, barefoot and feeling the cool softness of the carpet, but not quite enjoying himself. He wishes he had thought to have some coffee when it was early enough. Now it would only keep him awake, long after the chance to accomplish something has passed.

“It could be any time now. How could I know? Who ever does? Any minute now, I could be just like the rest of them – all of them that I can think of – just a thought, an image in the mind of someone left behind and sad, but still glad it’s not him that’s passed into a floating spark of energy. ”

Bone chips and a hum of unawareness beyond the range of human hearing. That’s what he has to contend with, in terms of a deadline, and he goes to the fridge for a bottle of water. Sometimes he stands and looks out the window, watches the neighbor across the alley, moving in the lights of his kitchen, and wonders what the man is cooking. Probably something good. A torta with carnitas and salsa. Queso and blue corn chips. But he doesn’t look out the window tonight. He goes back to the living room and carries the water bottle back and forth.

It wasn’t always like this. Before she left, he was usually calm about these things. She would ask questions that helped him focus, and promise that everything was going to be okay; that before morning, he would have thought of something and written it down. So oblivion could be held at bay another day. Then he could sleep and go out to lunch and wait at stoplights patiently, absently watching the mothers pushing babies in strollers.

“Babies aren’t the problem. Not kids or dogs, sleeping cats or uncertain weather. The problem is me. Simple as that. Me and my damned expectations, watching for shadows just out of sight, listening to the house for portentous creaks and sighs. It’s ridiculous, and I know there’s not a vision or a sound that can tell me where she’s gone, if she’s well, or if I’ll ever see her face again. It’s time to buckle down, make some popcorn, lock the door and get the job done on my own. After all, that’s what she was telling me all those years, that it’s all me.”

So that settles it, and he sits down and makes it happen, just as though she’s still in the house with him. He looks at the glow of the monitor on the backs of his hands and up at the clock on the wall, the second hand like a drum major. The wind from the south, from the ocean, dies away. The branches of the trees hang limp. Everything that was lined up for him trembles with a small satisfaction, because he turns on the dishwasher and goes to bed.



© 2005 J. Kyle Kimberlin
all rights reserved

Ten Marines have been killed in a single attack.

I have no words for this, except to say it’s a good thing we all support the troops.  

I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
-Thomas Jefferson