I am told that yesterday was Labor Day. I refuse to believe it,
for the simple reason that Labor Day comes every September and it
cannot possibly be that month
– not yet, not even close. Refusing to believe Labor Day has
passed is, however, getting in the way of my refusal to believe
that it is 2003.
I am told that yesterday was Labor Day. I refuse to believe it, for the simple reason that Labor Day comes every September and it cannot possibly be that month – not yet, not even close. Refusing to believe Labor Day has passed is, however, getting in the way of my refusal to believe that it is 2003.
I mean, let’s get serious for a minute here – how can it be that we have squandered almost three-fourths of a year that hasn’t even happened yet? What happened to the concept that a year is a major unit of time? I had not yet begun to explore the mysteries of 2002 when poof! – people start trying to tell me it has gone into the “closed” file. Wait, I want it back; there were things I left in there that I need to retrieve so I can start 2003 on the right foot. Hell, I’m still trying to get closure on 1999. Are we sure there isn’t a vast conspiracy out there that John Ashcroft ought to know about and start shipping people off to Guantanamo over, involving the issuance of calendars with only three weeks to each month?
There has to be an answer; it’s getting to the point where every time I look at the date I get a queasy feeling not unlike what you get in the back seat of a car with bad suspension on a mountain road. I mean, the years that used to fill scrapbooks cluttered with memories of people and events and emotional highs and lows are now nearly featureless landscapes compressed together by the tyranny of the clock.
Winter: The Pre-War – buncha government folks making speeches everywhere describing what in retrospect is a largely mythical place called Iraq. From Maine to Nebraska citizens prepare for an imminent all-out nuclear/biological/chemical/rocks-and-beer-bottles attack from Saddam’s vast arsenal of intercontinental ballistic camels which will probably happen any minute according to informed sources at the British offices of Marvel Comics, in which the Defense Department has complete faith, although the CIA has from time to time expressed reservations about certain details.
Spring: The War – damn we’re good; soldiers look forward to a reception like their grandfathers got in WW II on entering Paris. Flower petals in the streets, cheering crowds easily driven into a worshipful frenzy with the generous dispensing of chocolate, nylons, and King James Bibles. Maybe Dubya will show up in a photogenic astronaut suit and get to address an adoring multitude, say something derivatively stirring like “Ich bein ein Baghdadder!” a la Kennedy, and like Kennedy he’ll screw it up but the crowd will be too magnanimous to call him on it.
Summer: The Post-War – everything is fine, everything is on track, Rumsfeld continuously exuding inexhaustible self-assurance like the clairvoyant Emperor in Star Wars cackling to Darth Vader, “It is as I have foreseen it.” The government furiously borrows vast sums of money from every possible source including Tony Soprano, because it no longer has any of its own, in order to FedEx it to the financial black hole called Iraq where, we find out after we’re in up to our armpits, even the sale of it’s enormous oil reserves could not begin to pay for it’s limitless needs. What was originally alluded to as quietly as possible as “nation-building” turns out to be “nation-inventing,” a considerable more expensive proposition. Dubya, Colin, Donny and Condo sing four-part harmony in their insistence that the American people were in no way mislead about what we were getting into.
Oh yeah, and in California something about a recall.
See why I am so reluctant to let go of 2002?
