peace begins with billions and billions and billions

A life without freedom is like a body without a soul and freedom without thought is confusion. (Kahlil Gibran)

This is what it now means to be anti-war for me. I think fighting is ridiculous. God damn ridiculous. Every god damn ridiculous. Men unable to exercise emotion, desire, sense of reason, balance? There are billions and billions, that's right billions, of better things to do with this world on this beloved mother earth. (We are crashing into the moon in March to figure out something expensive and probably number eight billion eight on the list of better things to do than to fight Wars.) Ridiculous.

I played War of cards with my grandma for years as a child. We laid playing cards, gathered piles. It was a matter of sheer luck and laughter, something I could not enjoy with anyone other than her. Thank goodness there was no violence involved. I would be a very broken thing.

My cousin, the very first of my second cousins, close enough in age and relationship to be my close cousin, one of very few men labeled Sowecke in this world—joined ROTC, graduated from Bowling Green State University two years behind me, just flew to Iraq via Ireland and Kuwait, says the food's alright but doesn't taste quite right.

I sat next to a young man from the United States Army on my way home from Nebraska last week. He was a something or other—perhaps a Lieutenant, but not an Officer like my cousin—part of the Oregon Color Guard, handsome, military. They fly him to the capital regularly for ceremonies because he and his Oregonian colleagues are good. They are scattered throughout the plane in gym pants and sweat coats. For the ceremony, they dress in full suit and honor and sweat clams and darts while members of the press and invitees dress comfortably in southern city Saturday garb.

He joined the Army while still in high school because his grades were poor because he was confused, intoxicated on something American. He used to feel passionately against women who have multiple abortions. I think it's ridiculous that he likes to shoot birds. He went to Iraq in the beginning. They were trying to find sons of the bad leader. They were blowing up building after building all over Baghdad.

Now. He would love to go to college and major in creative writing but thinks he needs an English background to get in. I assure him he only needs money, some money and a clean break from violence, that it will be delightful, that knowing of more beautiful things than men with guns, with claimed wealth, is worth billions and billions. Billions and billions and billions.

Currently watching:

Elizabeth - The Golden Age (Widescreen Edition)

Release date: 05 February, 2007