Confused and All

I wouldn't have used the word Confused in the title of this blog if I were certain about things. This whole situation is confusing. I can ignore it to a point, take the easy way out and express limited outrage, then go about my day. But that wouldn't be fair. Now, I'm not under any illusion that what I say matters to anyone but myself, but for the sake of my own soul, my own cherished principals and moral world view, isn't it time I wrote about the war in Israel and in Gaza?

But it's complicated. Even using the term War means I'm taking a side. Because how can it be called a war when one side loses hundreds of people and the other loses four? How can it be called a war when one side has incredible missiles shooting off fighter jets while the other side shoots primitive rockets?

And ignoring terminology, how do I feel about it? Truth is I hear about the Hamas leader killed by Israeli missiles, and I can't feel sorry for him, because he called for suicide attacks on Israelis.

But what does that mean?

I pride myself on being a pacifist, and not just a pacifist, but an informed one, because I was in the Israeli military for three years and have earned the right to lose faith in the military and in the Israeli government. I saw death and destruction and people losing the best years of their lives for goals that could have been achieved with diplomacy years earlier. Israeli soldiers died in Lebanon for no reason. Israeli soldiers died in the West Bank and in Gaza to stop Hamas, only to watch it from a distance gain even more power when American citizens elected an idiot who insisted on Palestinian elections when conditions on the ground favored a hard-line, anti-Israeli government. And I watched strike and retaliatory strike, where civilians on both sides died in the streets and in their homes for no reason.

But I hear about the Hamas leader, and I hope he rots in hell, because my cherished pacifism can take a break for a while. And I hear about this guy's wives who died with him in the attack, and I think, Well, they knew what they were getting into. And I hear about his dead children, and I think, Isn't that a shame... Isn't war a horrible thing...

And I realize--I'm not really a pacifist. Just another fraud who had been led to believe that some people need to die, and some people don't, but die anyway, because that's the way the world is.

More to the point, because I might as well get there. I don't believe the Israeli government cares about its soldiers. I don't believe the Israeli government cares that my 7-year-old niece's school bus takes an alternative route to avoid Hamas rockets. I don't believe the Israeli government cares that the traumas of Israeli children mean another generation of hopeless dreams of peace.

Because we do this shit in Israel when we're in kindergarten. We sing songs of peace and wave the flags of all nations, and smile because we believe in our tiny selves. But we grow up to a situation that makes us think the outcome is out of our hands.

And don't get me wrong. I put more emphasis on criticizing Israel but--and I'll avoid the who's more wrong here--the world will be a better place when Hamas dismantles and its leaders descend into the hell kept for those who sacrifice the lives of the helpless among them.

And I wanted to get to the point, but now it seems like I'll just continue going in circles.

Because there's so much there.

Sure, it's tragic to see Gaza destroyed and people lying in pools of blood. But it's tragic to see Israelis die, and the difference shouldn't be about the numbers of casualties.

It's tragic to imagine my niece even thinking about the possibility of a fucking rockets hitting her school bus, but it's also tragic to imagine a generation after generation of Palestinian kids who are born to little hope and grow up to none.

And the most fucked up thing about it is that even if I manage the impossible task of being objective about it all, if on the one hand I see the that pain of four Israeli families is just as horrible as that of four hundred Palestinian families, because numbers are meaningless when you mourn a loved one; and if I see on the other hand that my niece's trauma is just as tragic as that of a Palestinian girl born into an endless war, and if I see all of these children, Israeli and Palestinian children who think their generations will fix it all, only to grow up realizing they're all just meaningless pawns in God's joke... Well, even if I see all that I still know nothing.

There's a war going on. Or maybe there isn't.

People die. Some of them deserve it. Or maybe they don't.

There will be peace in our lifetime. Or maybe there won't.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Well, maybe once more. When I dedicated a post to SJ, he sent all his people here to say hello, so maybe this being nice thing isn't that bad.

Preston from Me and the Blue Skies tagged me with a book meme.

So go visit Preston and say hello from me. He's an honest man who smiles all the time. And if he's not happy all the time, at least he spends the rest of the time being optimistic. So visit him at your own risk--you might end up happy for a moment.

But there's something else I have to warn you about. As of now, there's a lot of Christmas stuff there. Personally, I never got that whole obsession with the birth of Rabbi Yeshua. It's true that he had led an exemplary life (that we know of. We don't really know what crazy stuff he did in his travels in India), and it's true that he's the son of God and all, but--

Well, I guess that's a pretty big thing.

I don't know. Maybe I just have an aversion to the combination of red and green.

Here's the cut-and-pasted book meme thingy:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same.

Now, I understand the point of choosing a random book, but it's just not working for me. The nearest book is Thoreau's Walden, and I feel sleepy just thinking about this book.

Oh, here's a book with some good quotes:

P. 18

To me if you are a young girl and you find a boy "groovy" and you go off and move into his "pad" with him, you are definitely making a bad mistake. . . . If I had been living in sin instead of being married I would never have met my next wonderful husband!!!

P. 50

The best way to attract a man immediately is to have a magnificent bosom and a half-size brain and let both of them show.

P. 78

Recently I was in Denver for the opening of my cosmetic line and they had a big fashion show where Oleg Cassini and Pierre Cardin had their showings. Oleg, whom I adore, brought out a male and a female model identically dressed in green velvet tuxedos. It was darling.

P. 102

Never pick up something that is vulgar and buying it will do your husband more harm than good. . . . For example, don't ever buy a conspicuous colored Rolls Royce. A friend of mine bought a pink Rolls Royce and her husband could never use it going to the office. . . . It would have been better if she had bought a black one.

Happy New Year!

The Meaning of Life

Back when I was working in the bookstore, people would come up to the register and ask about jobs. We gave them applications, and then, after they filled them out, someone had to go upstairs to HR. I always volunteered to do that because I got to read the applications on the way up.

So I'm looking at this guy's application, and he's a young guy, and the only other job he's ever had was pushing shopping carts in a supermarket parking lot.

And his answer to "What did you dislike most about your previous job?" was, "Pushing carts when it was raining." And I thought it was funny.

But the best part was his answer to "What did you like most about your previous job?"

Because it's easy to make fun of this guy, and to think that if your previous job was pushing shopping carts, you're probably better off skipping that one in your application, but his answer to that question, as simple as it was, held some deeper meaning of what it meant to be human and what it meant to be alive, and the meaning of life and work and everything, like he had it all figured out, like this book I just finished reading, that asked the question, What if Sisyphus liked nothing better than to roll rocks uphill?

His answer was, "Pushing carts on a beautiful day."

Best Blogging Friend Award

I told SJ I'd dedicate a post to him. Well, here it is.

Really, he's the nicest guy in the world. And often, when I feel I can never write anything better than a previous post, knowing SJ is around to read and comment takes that load off my back, which in turn helps me experiment a little. Maybe not experiment, but at least realize I should just write what I want and not what I should write. Because he's easy and always encouraging. And he deserves my first ever award.

So visit him here and here, and see why his presence is appreciated on the internet as a blogger, as a commenter (is that the right word?), and in general, as a member of this blogging thing, whatever this experiment in social interaction turns out to be.

And look, SJ, I even made this award thingy you can pass on to as many people as you want.


Oh, I should make a button...

BBFA Button

<a href="http://www.peopleinthesun.com/2008/12/best-blogging-friend-award.html"><img border="0" alt="BBFA" title="Best Blogging Friend Award" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/3106149835_9facea9614_m.jpg" /></a>

The Birthday Parade

Usually, when someone from my family celebrates a birthday, the neighborhood has a parade. This year was no different, despite the ungodly weather.

It started with the kaleidoscope kalashnikov car that has some creepy music thing inside.

Oh, I see. It's called a Calliope.

So we quickly got the baby toddler out but he gave me the same look he gave me when he was a week old, when I brought him to the doctor to cut him up for hygienic reasons (but not really). The look that said, "I trusted you..."

So with all due respect to the good people of Baltimore, and of course I was grateful for the parade, but the baby and I were going back inside. Count to ten, and he was asleep.


Now we were alone in my friends' house, and I had a sleeping baby and a remote, which meant no more football.

First, I landed on the Golf Channel, where these three Boomers were talking about golf exercises. Pretty surreal, not sure why.

But even when the guy in yellow started stretching on the floor, the novelty wore off quickly, because I'm in my late-mid-thirties, not in my early twenties. When I were twenty-something in England, I used to watch Man and His Dog, a weekly sheep-herding competition. Things change.

So I kept on surfing, and found this golf-related movie.

Here's another clue. A post-modern one.

Luckily, before I got sucked into the movie, Honey came in and took over, which meant I got to go outside and see the Birthday Parade. But it was still Hellishly cold, even when God sent his messengers out, complete with angels sitting on a cross.



And that's pretty much it for the parade and the party. Now that it's over, here's something I'm not that comfortable talking about, but might as well:

A year ago we were in a hospital room with this stranger we were supposed to love. It wasn't instant, at least for me. How can it be instant? He was just this creature that lived inside my wife's body and now lived outside. And I was scared and I was sad because I thought it was the most horrible thing in the world that I didn't love my son.

But then I thought that maybe it was normal. Maybe everyone--at least men, because they're not the pregnant ones--goes through those same unspeakable fears. Maybe I just needed some time.

And of course I was scared and sad. Because I didn't know what my reaction would be when one day, out of nowhere, he'd open his big blue eyes and smile. And then I saw him laugh. I didn't know he would fall off his crib on his head, leaving me shaking as I waited for the ambulance. And I didn't know that one day I'd be so thrilled to see this stranger clap his hands, and sit up, and crawl, and stand, and sing, and dance, and talk in a language only he understood.

Because if anyone had told me any of these things a year ago, I would have had a good night sleep.

But no one was there to tell me about the future. No one was there to calm me down, maybe because I didn't tell anyone and didn't admit it to myself. And no one was there to tell me that even though I didn't know it yet, I was about to experience the most incredible year of my life. And even though on that first night I looked at my son and saw a stranger, at the end of our first year together, I look at him and see the most beautiful creature in the world, and I love him so much, it hurts like Hell to hear him cry, and it makes me the happiest man in the world to see him happy.

Happy birthday, Liam, my love.