What time is it anyway in Iraq?
It's 4 am in the morning here in Ithaca. The under-25 set have finally slipped into bed or are grappling with the Ceramic Maiden after another night of binge drinking. Clerks at A Plus are winking out behind the counter to the monotone hum of the coolers and the slow dripping sound of coffee machines, like spring brooks trickling through the winter ice pack.
In Baghdad it must be daylight. People are busy pumping oil into the desert sands -oil that will never power SUV's in America, never take people to Disney World, wasted oil that will bloat the price of gas at the A Plus pumps about a month from now. Or they're at work taping their windows - maybe some foreign subsidiary of Wal-Mart is rushing in tractor trailers filled with left over duct tape from last month's code orange alert. Our global village, the endless ebb and flow of goods. The open air markets in Iraq are almost deserted as most of the merchandise has already been sold out and folks have already left Baghdad.
It's Iraqi 9/11 Day. The connection that could never be convincingly made public is about to be made for once and for all. Connect the dots, share the pain, square death, spread the suffering. The crude ethos of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth that emerged from the desert thousands of years ago is finally coming home to bite them on the butt big-time.
Looking for a spark of resistance from his fellow bloggers, Ezra spied a recently published blog titled Wicked Go Away. Surely a parody, he thought, on the international Gunfight at the OK Corral that's unfolding like a bad grade B movie. Ezra opened it to read:
*Sigh*
Depression (OK no not really, but I'm bummed). It's the middle of March and I'm still looking for a job. It's 3am and I'm eating a fucking bowl of Special K. I stay up late and do very random things when I'm stressed. I did a major cleaning of my room tonight. Like one of those times when I'm leaving my room with two trash bags full of stuff that I just somehow accumulate. It's disgusting how much we process as Americans. It's even worse that we don't even realize or know where it comes from. We've become so accustomed to "things" around us our perspective of wastefulness is totally warped. On a more personal level I realized that I clean when I'm stressed. The only conclusion that I have is that it's a control thing. When things seem to be slightly hectic, there's always a messy room that can be told who's boss. Shove it up your ass Mr. Clean, I don't have golden glow surrounding me when my neuroticisms manifest themselves as physical labor. (The again, I'm not bald either, and I could never get something pierced)
Not all is lost though. I went to get a new pair glasses this afternoon while mommy and daddy's insurance still covers my sorry ass. (yes, I do wear glasses, in fact I have them on now, I only used them for work and school - i.e. that's why there's no photos of them) So I decided on some TAG frames that are pure titanium. The are soooo cool and I'm soooo psyched, and you can see them below.
Probably why Bush has a 66% approval rating going into this bloody mess. Americans just don't care. They're preoccupied with their new glasses at a time when the rest of the world sees that the Emperor has no clothes. George, your flagpole is showing. At least in Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and I'm sure some other places where people rouse themselves out of their stupor to ponder on world affairs.
Ok. It's time to dig back into the poetry archives again for a suitably depressing poem to sum up what a lot of people are feeling right now. Last year the following Auden poem was reprinted in an issue of The Book Press as a lead-in to a discussion of the meaning of America's 9/11.
September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Change the dates and the poem works as a wrap for what is likely to be another depressing day in Ithaca and the rest of the world.
Ezra sends out a prayer to any available {g)od to look kindly on the Iraqi people this day and every day that follows. They deserve as much mercy as any group of vulnerable human beings who follow their leaders blindly, who attempt to find meaning in their lives and, in so doing, end up being consumed by the furies of history.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:48 AM
