Mami left a message for me this morning:
"Eriqua, do you remember the Tiffany eggs you gave me a long time ago?"
My mind was groggily blank. I had been straddling the line between asleep and awake since 4:30 this morning. Asleep won and I didn't run this morning.
A dull throb hung in my frontal lobe and rotated to the back of head. Yesterday I rummaged through my living room with my friend Ronnie who told me my clutter wasn't hopeless. I was at a place where I would have pulled my hair out if I had any to pull.
I put up scarves as curtains in my wealth/prosperity corner. And everything else seems like an explosion of papers, clothes, collected items, and music.
"Mami, I am sorry, I don't remember..."
"It's okay. I'm going through all of this before the insurance man comes and it brings me down, but I'll be okay."
"Ay, Dios" I think to myself. A long healing process is ahead. On top of my own healing from The General Malaise which has been in check for a little bit...but over the last two weeks I have fallen off the marathon training. I ran on Saturday. My legs still hurt. I am supposed to be able to jog for 15 minutes straight this week.
I am supposed to...is an enemy phrase.
Dios mio.
I listened to the news too much this weekend. 2 bombings in Afghanistan that killed civilians. More American troops and Iraqui civilians dead this weekend. A looming potential for the United States to invade Iran.
And I have a pet peeve for the use of the word "crusade" to mean something like "a cause with conviction." Crusades were unjust wars of Church greed, in my opinion. In the name of "God" we sent soldiers to protect the "Holy Land" against the Muslims. The Church sent children to these wars. I don't think the term "crusade" is heroic or Christian at all. We'd never allow the term "holocaust" to be used in the same way.
The greatest commandment is supposed to be "Love one another." Any kind of war seems to be completely antithetical to this simple three word statement.
Christ, and now David Gray's "Babylon" is on right now. Cue tears.
1 comment:
A few points of clarification are in order from where I see things.
1) The United States is not going to invade Iran. Yeah, I read what Seymour Hersh said, but he knows as well as I do that the US Military has "contingency plans" on nearly every country on earth. We haven't recognized Iran diplomatically since the Iranian hostage crisis, and the ridiculous EU "negotiations" over Iran's nuclear program never spelled out an "or else" plan if Iran continued "defying the will of the international community". I can't blame the Iranians for recognizing that France and Germany are toothless.
2) The actual meaning of crusade that you don't like is why the word was applied to those series of 11th century wars in the Middle East. After the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the stage was set. Interestingly, the first "Crusade" (the so called 'People's Crusade' which contained more peasants than soldiers) marched off to Jerusalem without the blessing or permission of the pope. You can imagine how amused the Turks were by this.
Recommended reading: The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf.
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