2003-04-13 - 5:57 p.m.
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War in
"I threw up at the paaaaaark! I was siiick!"
-Alex, 4 years old
"Oh man I threw up walking home last night. Man, am I sick!"
-Stevo, age 21
And the best thing to do with a sniper according to CNN is to kill it. That's the best thing.
I watched a small child play with bubbles while I roasted a marshmellow to make smores yesterday. I watched and watched and tried to figure out where all the fun went. I saw this kid drag 2 Batman figures around every where, unable to grab anything unless it would fit in his small hands with a Batman in it. He stomped bubbles that landed and didn't pop, ran in circles yelling to himself, laughed louder than any adult can muster through all the happiness growing up has prevented, ran harder than any adult legs could muster. I saw Youth, the personification of new, the lifeblood of a smile. It's almost like I looked back and NOW I finally recognized how good it was.
The best days of our lives. I have been told it's childhood. I have been told it's high school and college and just after college and just before you get married. I have heard the best days of my life are gone, are now, aren't even here yet.
I couldn't give you answer for when they are though. I've hopefully got plenty left to see and if I've already seen the best of it, I don't want to even bother. Maybe it's their fault, that the best days came so early just to abandon them so late and the bitterness of this has caused these people to tell me that this is it. Maybe it's just their fate to live like shadows of some younger force they used to be, some minature of their youth blown up and out of proportion.
But whether it's true or not, I couldn't imagine a day being better than running through the wind, chasing something you don't understand, while everything else you don't understand explodes around you, as you play and you play and are the whole time deaf and blind. I couldn't imagine a better thing than imagination taking control for reality for a while and just coasting through on the breeze of my own personal thought.
There is a war on TV now. It's actually physically on TV. Not like old clips and pictures of mushrooms flying out of mountain tops. Not like grainy department store photography of a box that turns into a flower budding out with smoke. Not some CNN money shots of tanks ripping through seas of sands, an American flag whipping out the back like a cape, the stoic mannequin sticking out the top. These are cameras on the streets of some city, which could or could not be Baghdad, the proposed heart of evil presently. There's a green grainy texture over the view, but the view of "COALITION" troops
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which, everyone knows is just US troops and like 5 British troops. They tried to make it look like the US wasn't alone on this one, so they got the UK and then grabbed all their old Imperial collections and called it a coalition. They touted around how 40 countries make up the coalition. They failed to tell us that most of those countries have less people in them than we have forces in Iraq right now and that at the most, the help they gave was a landing strip somewhere or 5 guys in a truck with a handgun and an old map who came to give a hand.
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attacking in Baghdad, trying to sweep out a sniper is apparently news. One sniper in one location in one part of the whole country is making enough news to deny anyone any information of what else is going on. In all actuality though, I don't think I want to even know. What do I care what this coutnry is doing over there knowing that even if I did care, there's nothing I can do to get any of those boys home. I don't want any of them over there, and I don't want any more of this. I'm tired of all this anger that has penetrated this country since 9/11. Maybe it was Bush himself. Who knows. All I know is rewind a little bit and look at the world less than 4 years ago and you tell me where we were at. It was fine. There was fighting but it wasn't like this. The entire city of Baghdad is in shambles, with riots and pillaging. Is this the humanitarian aid we were talking about? Allowing them to grab from each other like animals now that the leader dog has been muzzled? Just what the hell is going on here?
I can't complain for myself because I'm fine. I have a girlfriend and that's all I really need to be fine. I could be losing a leg and missing all my teeth and be blind but if she was still there, then I'd be set. We're all watching the world unravel, the threads popping out one by one every day. The only thing I can think of to do is live it out, just live through it. It hurts. It hurts alot. It used not to. It used to be so easy. I used to not even need a girlfriend.
Just what the hell is going on here?
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
