in our generation

Almost four years.

It doesn't seem like there has been a single 6:00 a.m. alarm clock waking in the course of the past four years that didn't start out with a report on the deaths of soldiers and citizens from suicide bombers, arms attacks or roadside explosives. That's a lot of mornings. My mind hasn't numbed to it yet. I can't remember anymore what NPR talked about in the time before this war. I can't keep track anymore if our president still thinks that we are "winning" or which current catch phrase has replaced "the war on terror". Upon my 6:00 wakings, I can only imagine what it would be like if it were me waking up in the world of horrors that the reporters talk about on the radio. Then I wonder if we all think that - "what if it were me?" - and if there will come a time when I won't think that anymore at all.

I wonder if I have kids, will they grow up with these images swirling around them as they pick out their breakfast cereals or run from room to room engrossed in childhood games. Will the sights and sounds of this war be background noise to them? Or will it be another war that is so?

I'll end with this quote. It's taken from a poem written by Marge Piercy in 1969 in response to the television and photographic images of the Vietnam War:

Loving feels lonely in a violent world,
irrelevant to people burning like last year's weed
with bellies distended, with fish throats agape
and flesh melting down to glue.
We can no longer shut out the screaming
that leaks through the ventilation system..




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