earl-i in the mornin'

3:40 a.m.

The mind starts running over things early and waking its bearer up.  This morning it happened about 3 a.m., a little earlier than usual.

I don't understand how it is that the mind suddenly starts churning when you are trying to sleep. 

Maybe a dream makes the mind wake and start thinking, which in turn wakes everything else up.

Unfortunately, the emotions are awoken as well.

This morning I'm thinking about people who hurt me and people I may have to hurt.  I'm thinking about the fear of loneliness (my own.)

I'm thinking about other people who are hurting each other.

I have been thinking a lot about prejudice and how it is actually a mask of the fear of death.

I wake and in turn wake up my computer and I see the alert of a post, http://journals.aol.com/ecori/AnimalSpirits/entries/1463  by one of the most peaceful people I have never met.

I cannot answer her question.  I can speculate that they feel threatened and want to eliminate that threat.

"Make levees, not war" is a brilliant statement at this  time in history.  I wish that it was a thought that would suddenly change the world.  Unfortunately, we have a president with a whole lot of power and very little brain.  He is a member of a powerful family of oil barons and war mongers.

His agenda of trying to make up for his father's mistakes is being accomplished.  Behind his close set eyes and empty-head is the character of a simpleton.

He is throwing himself into the disaster zone to make it look like he cares about his fellow Americans.  He doesn't though.  He has NEVER had to.

As much as they try to sell you a guy who grew up all-American, they used to bathe that little fella in oil and swaddle him in money.  He did what was expected as much as he was able.

What kind of an ego do you have when you have a film made of you that shows you driving around in your car?  Did you ever see this?  There's a film of G.W. from way back in his early days of trying to suck power and he's in a car, driving around.  It's suppose to make him look smart and powerful?  He's in short sleeves, looking around as he drives.  For all you know, he could be driving around a cow pasture or oil field. I don't remember seeing anything but shots of him, not the scenery... maybe there was a passing glimpse of a modest home somewhere.  Trying to make him look like a regular guy, a man of the people.

He isn't.  Rest assured. 

Why do people fear peace?  They want peace... but they are so fearful that anything that threatens the country will mean the end of their idyllic lives and all that they have... big trucks, ostentatious homes, skinny wives full of Botox, humongous egos, pleasure boats, plenty of food and the right to vote.

Anybody and anything different is a threat to the idea that they are important in the over-all scheme of life and that they thought that they will live a long, long time.

That's why people are rude to the point of endangering strangers in traffic, in public.

The problem is that we are picking on people who know nothing but war now.  We are only helping to make orphans and crippled children.  There's no humanitarian mission in the thought of war. 

Fortunately it happens anyway.  The young people who are dying in the cradle of civilization are not unmoved by the people they see. 

Our armed forces do actually stop shooting sometimes and feed people or help make shelter.  They do bandage the injured and try to find laughter in the middle of hell.

They are also guilty of atrocities.  It happens in war and in peace as well.  It's nice to think there is no rape and torture going on, no random murder...  but it happens.  It happens.

I didn't even set off to talk about this.  I had my own aching heart in mind.  But what is that?  This isn't the time for vanity.  This is the time for action.

My parents are going to Mississippi next month.  They cancelled their vacation to take supplies to Katrina victims and to help out however they can.

I'm not really sure what good writers and historians can do....  My step-mother, an aging hippie, just had to do SOMETHING.  And my father, at 75, is going along with it. 

There are some people who believe that many of the people who fled Katrina are "better off now" than  the were before.  These are people who believe that poverty is a condition brought about by low morals.

Of course the people who think this are people born into money and people who have forgotten where they came from.

The Peace March in Washington was a wonderful thing.  There has to be more, though.  More organization, more of a singular voice without pushing other agendas in the process. We need to be unified on the singular point of ending the war and helping the people of Iraq move forward and not back. (The new Iraqi constitution may set things back, stripping women of the rights they do have altogether, for one thing.)

That's what will make our complaints be heard. 

There is more work to do.  If only we could respect each other in the process.