Home of the Soul Cookie

…to Camelot - Lego-style!

It still seems kind of surreal that the World Trade Center buildings no longer exist.

Salon has an interesting article from an Afghan-American on just who our real targets need to be: bin Laden and the Taliban, not the Afghanis.

Important point to remember: This is the same Taliban that, since it illegally siezed control of Afghanistan in 1997, has created some of the most restrictive living conditions for the women of Afghanistan.

Like the rest of the world, my office has been tuned into CNN and other news sources pretty much nonstop since Tuesday’s horrific terrorist assaults on New York and Washington D.C. Late yesterday, an email circulated around the office. It read:

Subject: FW: Wear Red White and Blue Thursday pass it along

To honor the men and women who died and those who risk their lives to save lives…let’s wear red, white and blue on Thursday to work and drive with your lights on…God Bless America and all of you who care. Please send this to as many people as possible.

An American

All very fine and well, all things considered.

Flash forward to this morning. Since several members of my department didn’t happen to have clothes that were red, white, and blue, they came in their everyday work clothes…

…and were lambasted for not being patriotic, or for not supporting the men and women who lost their lives.

That’s just not right to say.

It’s the height of arrogance to assume or assert that just because somebody isn’t following the actions of the "cult of sympathy" that they don’t care!

Especially in this time of crisis, we need to each be thankful and mindful of the people still around us in our lives, not driving "us-versus-them" wedges into each other.

Discuss.

I’ve been back on the “who am i/why am i here” kick lately, accompanied by a funk more intense than anything I’ve felt since my separation.

This past Saturday was particularly bad. At 3:30 in the afternoon on a bright and cheerful sunny Saturday I was curled up in a quasi-fetal position on the family room floor of Jason and Kris’ house, crying. Even now, I’m not really sure what I was crying about.

I remember wishing I had someone there to hold me.

It didn’t help that I was sleep-deprived (the cats, now locked in my room 24/7, spent most of the night trying to force open the door in painfully loud fashions), or that my early-afternoon RPG session went badly (if an hour and a half of uninspired and uninspiring nonsequiters can be considered bad). In that moment, though, I couldn’t figure out a reason for me being.

(Being what? Just being, existing.)

I finally fell asleep, and after a particularly positive Sunday night, didn’t think about it again until yesterday at lunch:

Remember that scene in Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams’ character leads his students to the trophies and artifacts of past students? Carpe diem. Seize the day. I’m not sure I remember how.

It’s like I walk around all day in a gray fog, numb to the world. I smile and make my little pleasantries, do my little monkeyboy dance, and the void grows.

I tread water, without hope, attracting despair like so many hungry sharks with my flailing.

I exist without true, unfettered joy. I’m happy, sure, and stuff amuses me and I laugh. But I find it difficult to point to something within my soul that isn’t somehow twinged with regret or anger or embarrassment.

And then the horrifying thought occurred to me: What if this is all I am because this is all I can be?

Fuck.

I don’t believe that.

I can’t believe that.

But it’s there, waiting just off-screen. An emotional wolf, waiting for me to falter so it can hamstring me and move in for the kill. And like a wolf it’s crafty, biding its time.

I need to soldier on. Keep going until I move back up the hierarchy of needs.

I felt “self-actualized” a long time ago. I want to be so again.