"Friday Night Frolic" - Three Little Birds

Original artwork by Geninne at http://www.geninne.com/

Every little thing gonna be alright...

That is, if you are not polishing a pomegranate on your denim pants in the Finest Supermarket in Kabul, Afghanistan, or hunting for the ripest mango at the outdoor marketplace in  Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, or getting your blood pressure checked at a health center in Fallujah, Iraq, or maybe, just maybe, tossing organic eggplant into your wicker basket at Marché Raspail in Paris' 6th arrondissement, or riding the tube in London when some cult-trained child on a suicidal mission—inspired by the recent martyrdom of Osama bin Laden, or directed by the Taliban or some other crazed, radical militia—decides to tug the cord on his vest.

Every little thing gonna be alright...

Have you seen the headlines today? Bin Laden's computer has been hacked and analyzed, revealing master terrorism plans. Bin Laden was more than just a figurehead. This, and months of secret surveillance by the CIA prior to the assassination. So, while I'm still unsettled, I've got to give props to our men and women over there—in the mountains, plains and deserts of the Middle East—a place, at the moment, I would not choose to be. Those who choose to serve have my greatest appreciation.

Every little thing gonna be alright...

My aunt and uncle flew from Paris back to their comfortable, coastal New England home earlier this week. With heightened security post bin Laden execution, they were most likely far safer on that Airbus A380 than some folks on ground. In particular places on this earth.

Every little thing gonna be alright...

A man's life can be cut short by just about anything. By war, by accident, by crime, by stupidity, by failure to take care of ones body or soul, or by stealth, arbitrary war, against whose armament—hungry, hostile mutants that consume body—we have no defense.

In that manner, the last, cancer, we lost the man who inspires today's Frolic. A man at the very top of my son's "Favorite" music list.  A man who knew that war does not prevent terrorism.

What war does, he understood, is to grease the axles of the bellicose and twisted machinations maculating the world, thus extending their useful life.

What he gave us will last many lifetimes, and many more wars.



And the absolute rule of venal leaders. And the world's insistence for expiation.  


Until.


Every little thing gonna be alright...

The Lopside of My Brain

Internet source unknown

How is it I've come to Wednesday without a single word in my notebook?

Probably because the thoughts that formulate the words (or is it the other way around?) are nebulous. Scrambled. Unreliable. Capricious.

What I've been pondering is most likely the same as what others have been: the death of Osama bin Laden.

And my jumbled and gloomy thoughts.

We did it! heard round the world. Americans grandstanding.

My thoughts somber. Decidedly unbubbly.

Saturday night I had wondered if my son had worn his golf shirt to the Spirit of Washington cruise on the Potomac. Sunday, May 1st, at 11:00pm in the parking lot of the school Max attends—waiting for the airport bus shuttle to drop Max and his classmates—I listened to a NPR reporter break news that the U.S. had killed the al-Quaeda leader.

Mission accomplished!

But what does this mean for our country? I wondered. What does it mean in terms of concluding a Middle East war that began nearly ten years ago? Why now? What took so long?

(Hitler's death was announced May 1, 1945.)

For some obscure reason in my lopsided brain, I didn't feel jubilant. I felt pensive and lugubrious. As if the killing were anticlimactic, a gesture. Bin Laden had become nothing more than a symbol, a ring-leader of who-knows-how-many-worldwide-free-roaming-terrorists. Then again, had he any power at all—cowering in caves, holed up in ramshackle hideaways?

We got him!

A militant Islamic group will ratchet up their plans. America will ratchet up it's security. Those were my very first thoughts. Violence begets violence.

Then, more news. Contradictions in news. He was armed. He was not... U.S. Senators say they saw a dead bin Laden photo. Then they said they did not.

What does it matter?

We executed him! A single shot to the head, it is said. A hole-in-one.

The massive outward expression of victory, the street dancing, I know, is beside the point. We all have our ways. While I didn't crack open a bottle of fizzy, I'm exhilarated that we can now move on. I'm happy that we are minus one terrorist. One fanatic. I'm happy that the death of bin Laden brings comfort and some sense of closure for those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, as if this loss can ever be closed. But I'm sad for the world. I'm sad for what all of this—9/11, the war, the execution, the residuals—says about mankind, human nature.

An eye for an eye!

Did my son wear his golf shirt? He didn't. I knew he wouldn't, but I packed it anyway. I wouldn't have thought to pack it if it weren't for this conversation. And as more news unfolded this week, I came upon this headline from msnbc.com: Obama's Golf Shoes a Clue to Bin Laden Raid. Golf shoes.

And the ramshackle mansion in which bin Laden had stowed himself was a walk away from the Abottabad Golf Course. Golf course.

Did I say (just one week ago) that I don't believe that coincidence is just coincidence? That the World conspires?

Jai Guru Deva... om...