Memorial Day

I've been living my life humbly over the last several days since my last post. Who am I to think this is a good place to say what I think. I'm just a human among millions and millions, and really, I am thinking my focus on caring for my children and living my day here in Oregon is maybe a better way for me to think than to stay in CyberVille, as though I have a relationship with it. I have one relationship through cyberspace that is a real one, everything else is just a kind of controlled TV fare or reading the news. I do like getting my information so freely. That is a luxury. And it is these luxuries that this day brings to mind for me.

I watched a presentation this morning on MSNBC about Iraq veterans. One guy had been a sniper for the marines there and had astonishing things to say and insights about life here and there. He was 22 in the story and had already served & came back skinny and exhausted. Here, in this country he said, killing one person would be considered a crime that could give you life in prison. There he deliberately killed hundreds. Aimed and fired and hit. And what he said is that it came to where if it were a man, he'd hoped the guy had remembered to say he loved his child before he left home that day; that kind of thing. My dad is a veteran and I'm afraid to go see him. He's in such awful shape that it tears me up and I don't have the strength to do what I'm supposed to do and yet endure seeing him that way. He fought in WWII and told me he was a sharp-shooter for the army, went ahead of troops shooting snipers out of the trees in the Pacific. He was unloaded onto a beach with a couple of hundred other men and was one of 8 who survived once the Japanese surrendered. What kind of species are we? And now we are sending a unit to land on Mars. I'm not sure what to make of any of this. My son picks at his skin. Primate. We are primates living on this spinning blue orb. We went to Portland & visited OMSI on Saturday and the kids loved it. I was taken even then by the organic quality of it all. The existential aspect of our humanness. In Portland, there are tons of us humans, maneuvering all around in our little metal cars. It just seems really bizarre to me these days. I think maybe I should have been a dog.

When we left OMSI, off we went to IKEA, another warehouse marketing machine. I'd never been to IKEA and my husband thought it was the greatest thing. Me, I like a small shop owned by a local family or something. But we got a mattress for me and that was nice, because I've been sleeping on a foam pad on the floor for a couple of weeks now since my youngest son started sleeping on the couch instead of me. The IKEA in Portland is next to the airport, and we could look up and see jets directly overhead, see the glowing windows of the passenger area, as it was dusk. There was a huge gray cloud coming in from the south and by the time we left IKEA it was beginning to rain. My husband wanted to drive out onto Marine Drive and watch the airplanes land and take off. It's directly next to the Columbia river, so I get a bit nervous riding along at a good clip so close to that huge river so close it would swallow you if you got knocked into it, or drove off the road. I mentioned, as lightening began to flash, that often flights are delayed until severe storms like this pass. Oh, my husband said. Oh yeah. We watched two jets land, and it was raining hard by the second one. No airplanes were budging from their docks. The rain became torrential and we left. I rode quiet while my husband drove slow, visibility was really bad all I could think of was the fact that we were skirting the huge Columbia River and maybe there would be a flash flood. The rain continued and as we drove back south there were huge waterfalls splashing down onto the roadside all the way to I-5, gathering into a small river instead of a roadside. I was glad to get home.

Meanwhile I'm reading that gas is going to go up again. I can't help but wonder about how we will pay for everything then. Humanity really baffles me. Our societal interdependence may have launched us into an unprecedented period of wealth, as I can't imagine having to live in a culture of violence where we must compete for resources so directly, but like other aspects of behavior on this earth, it is probably fleeting. Yes it's a downer, but gosh. It's what is coming into my ears and eyes and head.

You know what I'm doing about my time then? Nope, not drinking a brandy. Not anymore. I'm knitting my friend Cherry Blossom her *third* yes third sock. The first I had to rip out. The second is *huge* around the ankle and ridiculous. I studied the pattern and others with similar heels and decided the pattern is faulty, heel too deep. I'm about ready to start the heel again on this 3rd sock and I'm hoping it will be better. But when I finished the 2nd sock, all I could do was laugh and laugh. It looked so ridiculous even though I had put in hours on the thing.

Life would be easier I think if I could just think about fashion or believe that somehow my words matter, but in the larger view of things, my words don't matter. So I guess I will focus on this littler view and take in what's good about it. Like my kids and my Saint Bernards.