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So they got al-Zarqawi. Are they so stoooooopid they don't realize terrorism is Hydra-headed?
Apparently.
For every one they get, a hundred new ones will take his place. That's the way it works. It is better to stay with the Big Bad you know. Shoot at him all you want, but don't aim to kill.
###
In retirement, Rick Steinhardt ascended from comfortable burgherhood to baronial splendor on far-off Orcus Island. In the process, he cleaned out his Berkeley basement; two black plastic garbage bags filled with my late mother's stuff ended up in my cousin Alicia's garage. In due time, Alicia's mother – my mother's sister Annie – went through that stuff which is how last week a package arrived in the mail for me containing my birth certificate, my baptismal certificate, ten pictures of Max in early childhood and a brief note from Annie: "Sorting through Lynnie's things was… complex."
Ellipsis hers. There's a sensibility to Annie that never comes out in the f2f but is there on the written page.
I thought of writing her a letter back. Annie and I have been estranged for quite some time. Speaking with her, I thought, would be… difficult. (Ellipsis mine.)
At any given time, I'm estranged from any number of significant people in my life. It's something of a pattern. I'm not aware of being the type of person who alienates people or is easily alienated in my turn, but the pattern is unmistakable and I'm at the center of it. So I must do it somehow.
I called Annie. We chatted for half an hour or so. "Your poor mother," she sighed. "You know one time in those last few weeks, Stew and I were up visiting her and she was standing by the window in her little apartment looking out. 'Look at all those dumb little people living their dumb little lives. And all I want to do is to get to live my dumb little life. But I can't.'" Annie laughed. "'Dumb little lives' has become something of a catch phrase for us."
My own dumb little life suddenly turned dreary yesterday. I think it was the change in the weather – in sunshine, I am upbeat; when the cloud cover thickens, I turn maudlin and sad. There's some riddle here to this life that I'm not understanding and it has to do with attachment. I look at the people who come into the store and they are so attached that they can't go for five minutes without using their cell phone to solicit input from a Significant Other: "I am standing here looking at a bottle of hot sauce with a cowboy hat. Do you think I should buy it for Derrick? He likes hot sauce and he likes cowboys –"
And I am thinking, this decision involves an $8 expenditure and you need backup?
But really it's not about backup at all, it's about attachment. I am with you, physical distance notwithstanding.
Before I married Ben, I could never understand the types of conversations I would overhear in supermarkets where couples would spend five minutes debating the virtues of a particular brand of laundry detergent.
After I married Ben, I started understanding that these conversations were kind of like fertilizer for the familiar little garden where both these people had planted themselves.
Being a Martian, it's hard for me to grok these human customs sometimes.
I almost forgot Robin's therapy session last night. I'd had a hard day at the store – we made our numbers on the basis of one big sale to an airplane pilot who'd driven all the way down from San Jose just to come to the store. ("And are you going to the aquarium now?" I asked as I was bubble wrapping his purchases. "No, I told you – I drove down just to come here. And now I'm turning around and driving right back.")
Otherwise business was slow, slow, slow. Suppose there is no summer tourist season this year? I thought. Suppose it's all drudgery and empty time put in behind the counter. I sat at that counter now putting together the media database for Cirque du Méprise's July dates feeling dead and despairing. Every hour or so, I'd call Robin – what are you doing, turn off the computer, get out of the house. It was Robin's first day out of school. I ought to have been home baking cookies, planning a summer reading list, taking him on a nature hike through the Elkhorn Slough.
Robin leaves for a five-week visit to his grandmother on June 28th but I don't know what he's going to do until then. There are day camps here but they all either start in the same week he's leaving or involve driving long distances which I just can't do.
But I can't leave him alone in the house to his own resources. He has no resources being eleven years old and a strange kind of mix of utter dependency and pre-adolescent willfulness.
I call his father. His father is back to never answering his phone. What river did the cell phone fall into this time? I wonder.
Apparently.
For every one they get, a hundred new ones will take his place. That's the way it works. It is better to stay with the Big Bad you know. Shoot at him all you want, but don't aim to kill.
In retirement, Rick Steinhardt ascended from comfortable burgherhood to baronial splendor on far-off Orcus Island. In the process, he cleaned out his Berkeley basement; two black plastic garbage bags filled with my late mother's stuff ended up in my cousin Alicia's garage. In due time, Alicia's mother – my mother's sister Annie – went through that stuff which is how last week a package arrived in the mail for me containing my birth certificate, my baptismal certificate, ten pictures of Max in early childhood and a brief note from Annie: "Sorting through Lynnie's things was… complex."
Ellipsis hers. There's a sensibility to Annie that never comes out in the f2f but is there on the written page.
I thought of writing her a letter back. Annie and I have been estranged for quite some time. Speaking with her, I thought, would be… difficult. (Ellipsis mine.)
At any given time, I'm estranged from any number of significant people in my life. It's something of a pattern. I'm not aware of being the type of person who alienates people or is easily alienated in my turn, but the pattern is unmistakable and I'm at the center of it. So I must do it somehow.
I called Annie. We chatted for half an hour or so. "Your poor mother," she sighed. "You know one time in those last few weeks, Stew and I were up visiting her and she was standing by the window in her little apartment looking out. 'Look at all those dumb little people living their dumb little lives. And all I want to do is to get to live my dumb little life. But I can't.'" Annie laughed. "'Dumb little lives' has become something of a catch phrase for us."
My own dumb little life suddenly turned dreary yesterday. I think it was the change in the weather – in sunshine, I am upbeat; when the cloud cover thickens, I turn maudlin and sad. There's some riddle here to this life that I'm not understanding and it has to do with attachment. I look at the people who come into the store and they are so attached that they can't go for five minutes without using their cell phone to solicit input from a Significant Other: "I am standing here looking at a bottle of hot sauce with a cowboy hat. Do you think I should buy it for Derrick? He likes hot sauce and he likes cowboys –"
And I am thinking, this decision involves an $8 expenditure and you need backup?
But really it's not about backup at all, it's about attachment. I am with you, physical distance notwithstanding.
Before I married Ben, I could never understand the types of conversations I would overhear in supermarkets where couples would spend five minutes debating the virtues of a particular brand of laundry detergent.
After I married Ben, I started understanding that these conversations were kind of like fertilizer for the familiar little garden where both these people had planted themselves.
Being a Martian, it's hard for me to grok these human customs sometimes.
I almost forgot Robin's therapy session last night. I'd had a hard day at the store – we made our numbers on the basis of one big sale to an airplane pilot who'd driven all the way down from San Jose just to come to the store. ("And are you going to the aquarium now?" I asked as I was bubble wrapping his purchases. "No, I told you – I drove down just to come here. And now I'm turning around and driving right back.")
Otherwise business was slow, slow, slow. Suppose there is no summer tourist season this year? I thought. Suppose it's all drudgery and empty time put in behind the counter. I sat at that counter now putting together the media database for Cirque du Méprise's July dates feeling dead and despairing. Every hour or so, I'd call Robin – what are you doing, turn off the computer, get out of the house. It was Robin's first day out of school. I ought to have been home baking cookies, planning a summer reading list, taking him on a nature hike through the Elkhorn Slough.
Robin leaves for a five-week visit to his grandmother on June 28th but I don't know what he's going to do until then. There are day camps here but they all either start in the same week he's leaving or involve driving long distances which I just can't do.
But I can't leave him alone in the house to his own resources. He has no resources being eleven years old and a strange kind of mix of utter dependency and pre-adolescent willfulness.
I call his father. His father is back to never answering his phone. What river did the cell phone fall into this time? I wonder.
