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

Why is it that President Bush keeps referring to himself as the Commander in Chief of the US? He’s the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, not the whole country. The rest of us have a president with limited constitutional powers; we don’t get commanded to do squat.

Better a dancing chef than a commanding chief.

War would end if the dead could return.

— Stanley Baldwin, statesman
(1867-1947)

By the way, it turns out my friend Elaine was right, when she wondered if the piercing whistle slashing my neighborhood could be from a car. Turns out it’s a burgundy Honda, and the kid who drives it is apparently infatuated with the alarm.

I was walking Happy through the park the other day, when I remembered that I’d sent a photo to Flickr the night before, and because of site maintenance I wasn’t able to check it. You know, make sure it was uploaded and organized properly. Turns out it did not post to Flickr, but here it is.

And it occurred to me it’s pretty stupid to be walking through the park on a beautiful day, thinking about something like this. After all, the Internet isn’t even a real place.

What a thought. The Internet, not a real place. And the next thought was, I shouldn’t tell the people on the internet. They’ll be offended.

Wow. The mind does strange things when we wander too far from the two dimensional non reality of the computer. You’re not offended, are you, my little Max Headrooms? No, I’m sure you’re not. And you won’t be hurt if I tell you I’ve been too long at the zoo. So having bounced into this phenomenological pothole, I’m shutting down, and off to read a (real) book and get some sleep. Maybe a banana. See you tomorrow, if I can find my way back down the rabbit hole.

Oh, and here’s a poem.


The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that I’m a total noise grouch. This place is normally quiet and most people are considerate and cool. And there are lots of sounds that I love, to say nothing of music per se. One of my favorite sounds is the chime of this clock, which lives in my living room.


Kind of a crappy picture, but I didn’t want to use a flash. Anyway, it belonged to my grandfather, and it was made in 1870 and it sounds beautiful. It sat on the mantle of their living room for years before I was even born, and now they’re gone and it’s here with me. I like to hear it tick but especially its very simple, homey chime; so much so, that I often mute the TV, close my eyes and listen.

It reminds me. Lets me believe in a time and place where I was safe, where there was this clock keeping the hours until dawn, ticking with the sound of Grandma’s steps on the kitchen floor and Papa’s snoring, and the only worry I had – if you can call it that – was the abject anticipation of a sleigh impacting on the roof. So can you blame me for cherishing not silence but peace?

About the aggravating whistle being emitted into my poor noise-polluted environs, Elaine asks “could it be a gadget? electronic?”

Sure, I thought about that too. But as time goes by and it continues, it sounds more and more human. I think it’s a poor little moron who comes out on the balcony across the alley and one row down. I asked a neighbor, who isn’t an idiot, and he concurs with my theory.

Despite my windows being closed against the evening chill, I heard it about twenty minutes ago — a quadruple tweet — and hurried out onto my balcony. I could see him over there, a bleak figure in hooded motley. Did I imagine it, or is he humpbacked? Regardless, this cretin can whistle. Loud.

I’m surprised coyotes aren’t gathering down out of the foothills, even more pissed off than me.

I stood and stared at him through the twilight, until he disappeared down the stairs.

Now I’m daydreaming about beating him into eternity with a shovel, and burying his deformed carcass in the field of baby’s breath next door. A nod to the heirs of Darwinism … a consummation devoutly to be wished.