Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The End*

It is morning. I am sitting on my bed, half-dressed, listening to
This American Life's 'The Center for Lessons Learned', which is about
the Army's attempts to understand post-conflict reconstruction.

I should be getting ready for breakfast but I can't.

I burst into tears when an Army guy said that the U.S. was surprised
when they saw how much work it actually took to reconstruct Kuwait
after the Gulf War.

These attempts, fumbling attempts really, that endanger everyone's
lives (mine, yours, some young soldier based a few hundred miles away
from where I'm sitting) are coming into play here.

The U.S. thought the victories in Afg and Iraq would be the end, but
it's not. It's the beginning. But why are things getting worse?

The end is often so clean and neat in novels but very rarely in real
life. Things seem to go on and on, interminably, one loose end
leading to another loose end.

I am hopeful sometimes but more often, I am struck by the lack of
hope. Of the lack of possibility to actually do something
meaningful. The unnecessary ego-filled roadblocks that thwart every
good impulse anyone has.

I don't want to be here anymore.

But I am, and things go on for me and for everyone else. People are
living their lives, amidst the stories of thieves and kidnappings of
business-owners, the random suicide blasts and the chaos that makes
more and more locals speak longingly of the suffocating order of the
Taliban.


* For more sunday scribblings:

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

nonizamboni said...

sobering post--may you have hope in spite of it all
thanks for sharing from your heart

Anonymous said...

(still digesting. quite the heart-ful. and makes me think my Holiday Villa gripe was childish. Thankfully OMG inspired me to cover it up with some love.)