We’re gonna let it all hang out.
Now that’s original.
Write About Acceptable Losses
$4,500,000,000 per month. That’s roughly how much the United States is spending on the Iraq war. $54,000,000,000 per year. Going the other direction, that’s $1,125,000,000 per week. $150,000,000 per day. $6,250,000 per hour. $104,167 every minute. $1,736 every second.
Body counts are a little harder to come up with. Even conservative estimates indicate that more than 50,000 Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, and over 3,000 U.S. military personnel have died. Ironically, December 25, 2006 marked the day when U.S. military deaths eclipsed the number of innocent people killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Of course, if you’re George W. Bush, these are evidently acceptable losses. And with Bush intending to increase troops by more than 20,000 in the near future, we can expect the body counts in both categories above to rise.
I find it ironic that President Bush evidently found it unacceptable in March 2005 to lose Terri Schiavo, even though she was in a persistent vegitative state. He took time out from his vacation to fly to Washington specifically to sign into law a bill (the so-called “Palm Sunday Compromise”) transferring the Schiavo case jurisdiction into Federal custody in an attempt to prevent Schiavo’s feeding tube from being removed.
After her autopsy, Terri Schiavo’s brain weighed only half what it should have weighed had it been healthy. Clearly, her neurological damage was so great that her brain was literally withering away. And yet, losing her was unacceptable.
Evidently, in George Bush’s mind, the lives of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis are worth less than the life of one brain-dead Catholic.
Deep Subjects
My wife and I talk about deep subjects. After taking some laundry out of the dryer tonight and, inevitably, finding one unmatched black sock, I got to wondering: Is there a Bermuda Triangle for socks?
“Yes,” my wife replied emphatically when I asked her.
“Okay, so if we accept the existence of a Bermuda Triangle for socks, does that mean we also need to entertain the possibility of a Bermuda Shorts Triangle?”
She just groaned and rolled her eyes. Okay, so this was not one of the deep subjects that we talk about. (Too bad, really. It seemed interesting to me.)
Usually, our deep talks have more to do with philosophy, psychology, children, science, music, esoterica, or history. We don’t always agree, but we do discuss, and I like that. One of my wife’s most impressive qualities is her intelligence, and I’m thankful almost every day for our mental connection.
Phoning It In
I was supposed to go to my writer’s group tonight. I had critiqued the manuscript for the session and even done the homework for tonight (which is always optional, but also always encouraged.)
So, what happens? I get my first migraine of 2007. It wasn’t too bad in the early afternoon, but then I spent two hours at Dave & Buster’s fixing a register while a corporate party was going on. Ugh. I love D&Bs, but between the loud games just off the midway bar and the louder corporate revelers, that pushed my headache off the charts.
I drove the few miles home, took some migraine medicine, clamped pillows on both sides of my head, turned out the lights, and somehow spiraled into sleep between waves of throbbing pain. When my wife woke me up for dinner, the migraine was still there, but food and hydration (and probably the meds) helped take the edge off.
My writing group will be finishing up in about fifteen minutes, assuming they are on schedule. I feel guilty for missing the group, especially since I had confirmed my attendance with the group’s mentor, Melanie Tem, a couple of days ago.
One thing I have learned over the last couple years, though, is that my health needs to come first. One scary incident in the ER with chest pain was enough to teach me that. I don’t think I would have enjoyed class tonight, and I doubt I would have contributed much to it. Add to that the blinding bright headlights that I would be facing on the way home, and I’m sure I made the right decision. (My migraine flared just imagining those headlights. Talk about being susceptible to suggestion!)
I did want to spend at least part of the class time actually writing, though. My headache is a dull roar, and I think I can eek out a few more words for my daily writing prompt exercise. So, I’m off to journal now.
Write about a ceremony
He’s an old man now, and the 8 mm home movies are almost as old as his children. Some of them are older, in fact.
She’s an old woman, and it’s been ten years since their second child died. The movies have aged a decade in the dark tins since they were last watched. They couldn’t bear to see the innocent face of the child who they now knew would pass before them.
It’s been ten years, and they figure it’s time. Time to acknowledge and celebrate his memory. He would be fifty this year. So the old man carefully unpacks the antique projector, blowing the dust off the bulb and lubricating the reel axles. Next comes the round tins of celluloid, labeled with faded pencil on masking tape: “White Sands, April 1959”, “Silver City, Summer 1962”, “Yellowstone, 1965.”
He opens one at random, gently dropping the 8 inch reel into his left hand. He unrolls a few frames from the tape, pulling gingerly in case the film has stuck together over the years. It’s not stuck, but it is brittle, and the gentle tug causes a tear in the film’s leader. Drawing a sharp breath in and pulling his lips back to expose smoke-stained dentures, the old man concentrates on threading the film through the projector, making sure to keep even pressure on the narrow celluloid. He threads it successfully, and hooks the end of the film through the slot in the take-up reel.
“Ready, hon?” he says to the old woman.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she replies, a hint of an Oklahoma accent in her tone.
He stands, turns out the light, and steps back to the projector, stooping to pull a flashlight out of its charger on the way. With the flashlight on, he turns a knob and the room fills with the chattering sound of a Super 8 mm projector. He clicks the flashlight off.
After a few seconds, an image of two children, a boy and a girl, appears on the wall, yellowed with age, a long scratch stuttering down the right side of the frame. The kids wave and move their mouths; there is no sound. The old woman starts to cry.
“I think I’m glad that the camera couldn’t pick up sound,” she says. “I don’t think I could take it if I heard his voice.”
“I wish we could hear him. I think I’ve forgotten what he sounded like when he was that age.” The old man puts his arm around the old woman, rubbing his fingers into her shoulder. “I still say that it’s not right. A parent shouldn’t have to bury his child, no matter how old the child is. It’s backwards!”
The old woman reaches up with a tissue, wiping at the tear track on the old man’s face. “I know, darlin’, I know.” Settling into each other’s arms, they know they have found a new yearly ritual.
On the home movie, the young boy runs around in a cowboy outfit, guns blazing silently.