Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
In imperial Vietnam, when a scholar could not in conscience continue his life at court he would petition the emperor for permission to return to his home village, where he would raise medicinal herbs & teach the local boys their basic Han characters & the rudiments of Confucian thought.
It’s uncanny but Joseph Duemer has reflected much of what is on my mind today about the situation in Iraq. Like him, I too am reduced to …digusted silence, and would prefer to just putter around my photos and my walks and the writing that remains uniquely me.
I feel at times, though, that I’m letting down those who need our support by showing flowers when children are dying. But I think what matters more is that you hold the dead in your heart, and their memories in your head, and you don’t forget, especially when it’s time to show you haven’t forgotten.
If I felt some satisfaction in the writing, I would continue, and gladly. But all it does is leave me frustrated, and instead of eloquence, I am reduced either to rhetoric, thinly disguised, or bitch slapping war bloggers. As for these fine folk, left or right, see me in a couple of years, and we’ll see who remembers Atrios or Reynolds, Kos, or LGF. The most eloquent of us cannot continue saying the same thing, over and over again, before even the most dogmatic goes mad.
I cannot convince anyone to change their mind, or feel the horror of a world out of control if they truly believe all is well. I cannot make the dehumanization of the worker force by corporate interests that much more clear; the degradation of the environment that much more frightening; the isolation of those made different, or the pain we’ve inflicted on those harmed that much more compelling; nor will I be able to hasten Bush’s departure from the White House more quickly.
For now, I opt for herbs.
