Quite a few journallers…

Quite a few journallers are commenting on the U.S./Iraq war these days, taking positions for or against. I haven't, and probably won't, because I feel as if I don't really know enough to have an informed opinion, and that right now, I can't take the time, the days or weeks of research, that it would take to be able to talk even semi-coherently about it. I would do it (and my exams could go hang themselves), if I thought I could then make a difference to the outcome, but that seems absurdly unlikely. So instead, I think about it as little as possible.

I bury my head in the sand, and busy myself with nineteenth century literature, with other stories about other wars, long ago and already long-decided. I clean my apartment, water my plants, cook dinner for my friends. I paint, and crochet, and glue paper to boards; I nurture and create and build. It only helps a little.

I'm grateful for the current fragile peace in Sri Lanka, after twenty years of war that have daily threatened my family and friends there, the war that destroyed my grandmother's home in fire-bombing, and sent her fleeing to a convent for refuge. I'm especially grateful to the Norwegians, who have helped create that peace with their generous and cool-headed assistance at the peace talks in Oslo.

When I can't help thinking about what is happening in Iraq, what we will soon be doing there, my heart hurts. I grieve for the lives that will be lost, the families there and here who will lose sons and daughters, lose fathers and mothers. I wonder how long it will be until we find a more humane solution to the difficult resolution of human differences. I don't have a better answer, but I cannot believe that it doesn't exist.