Tattered paper, frayed string

There is no neat way to wrap this up within myself, and I begin to suspect that I never will.

The young man to the left should have been seventeen in a few weeks. What was arranged in the casket last Friday was a poorly-done parody. Even in black and white, this image--sort of a blonde Daniel Radcliffe--is more reminiscent. This, more than the actual corpse, tolls the slow churchbell in my brain: "You will never see him again."

Understand that I cannot and will not pretend to mourn the personality that was a the cliched "perfect storm": The product of abuse and neglect and selfishness from some quarters and overindulgence and the warmed-over mistakes (of the previous generation) from others. During the downward spiral, I, like his grandfather (my father), shrugged at the waste and more or less washed my hands of him until such time as Real Life bitch-slapped some sense into the stubborn skull. "Some people just have to hit rock bottom," Dad and I parroted to each other.

Yet the memories, good and bad, appear in motley crowds at the oddest times: A baby's first cry heard through the maternity room door. Frog-marching a post-toddler to the bathroom to wash precocious profanity from his mouth. The nephew cheering his uncle in a tournament (and booing the same uncle's opponents). Introducing my padawan carnival ride junkie to The Zipper and dodging the hail of the change he forgot in his pockets. Ruthless, take-no-prisoners dogfights between two equally hot (and short) tempers.

Now I--ever so dimly--understand why fundamentalists (of any creed) automatically uncork the "moralizing" bottle to get themselves through times like these. There is nothing at all for the living in a death this unexpected, this random. Not unless we can shoehorn it into connect-the-dots notions of cause and effect, Manichean landscapes of Right and Wrong. Being deficient in that reflex (and a slow learner besides), I have come to expect to pay dearly for any truly valuable wisdom/insight/knowledge that I gain. I assume that others learn more readily than I. Yet there is no recompense for this loss to the ones that I love. They suffer, and I have so few tools with which to lessen that suffering.

"Oh, baby, what were you thinking?" I whispered to the remnants of my nephew during the visitation. I don't expect an answer now--or ever, for that matter--any more than I did then.

Ghosts

I read Gilbert's "Nuremberg Diaries" back-to-back with Speer's "Spandau Diaries" six or seven years ago. I wish I'd gone back to them in 2003 to be reminded of this gem from the Nazi who cheated the hangman (a.k.a. Hermann Goering):

"...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Excepting the hard-core Republican Guard, my gut says that Joe Sixpack has largely arrived at the same conclusion.

As Dearest and I were on the road last week, I wondered aloud whether the Democratic Party (and any moderate Republicans who haven't been driven out for the heresy of using the padding between their ears) had dropped the proverbial ball on scrutizing the book-cooking for the Iraq War...or whether the case for impeachment was being built with quiet, but devastating thoroughness, leaving no 'i' undotted nor 't' uncrossed.

As much as I want to see a trial that would make Nuremberg look like traffic court, the thought of how much damage Dick "Mr. Potter" Cheney (avec eminence grise Karl "the Kingmaker" Rove whispering in his ear) could do before January 2009 nearly gives me a facial tic.

(Granted, it's not much to choose from, between malice and stupidity. But stupidity may be, ever so slightly, the lesser of the twin evils.)
...

There will be another, more personal post later in the week. I've let finals and other obligations drive my priorities these past few weeks. Including the "priority" of distilling some very convoluted emotions into words.

Another drive-by blogging

Just ran across this during the (belated) news-cruise: http://www.physorg.com/news97953648.html It's just mind-blowing to think that anything as perishable as cloth could survive for going-on-three millennia. History's flotsam can be so boggling...

A random act of violets

Our freaky Spring played hob with the lilacs, but the lovely white violets with their purple centers turned out in droves for it. Alas, the lawn (desperately) needed mowing, so I figured that picking them to digitally memorialize their beauty was better than the alternative dismembering.

A banal composition, but I'm still in "finals" mode. Enjoy.

A science "quickie"

The next week will be as ugly as the past few have been, but after that, there will be time for things other than duty.

In the meantime, here's a tardy dose of kewlness: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070423/sc_livescience/ancientrainforestrevealedincoalmine