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Disturbing the Universe
Mar. 20th, 2008 | 09:43 am
I am sitting here at my desk with my morning cup and something called a “Frogger,” a large, dark, very hard and chewy cookie that is wonderful with coffee. Ingredients include molasses, dark rum, and salt water. I made a couple of batches last night, and will probably end up taking a few into work because when I offered M one, he shuddered and told me he’d never seen the point of molasses cookies. Froggers are not for everybody. As robust as they taste, and as hard as they are to chew, they are a delicate plant in that if they aren’t prepared right, they’re completely inedible. I had to throw out a tray of them because they’d burned and nobody, absolutely nobody likes a burned Frogger.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the war. When I got to work that afternoon, I heard chants and the thump of drums and saw a large crowd gathered at the junction of Market, Post, and New Montgomery. A group of demonstrators were staging a die-in. I couldn’t see many of them because they were lying down and surrounded by a cordon of police, but beyond the dark booted legs I caught a glimpse of a pink jacket and hat on one demonstrator, a white beard on another, an arm waving a bunch of tulips. Across Market other demonstrators watched, holding up a banner. There was even a band. Speakers stood on the periphery of the crowd that had gathered on my side of the street (the North side), waving leaflets and shouting. A local woman’s choir that I remember seeing five years ago at the big MLK day demonstration, sang “We Shall Overcome,” and a lithe, middle-aged couple in leotards did Yoga, a blanket spread before them dotted with flyers. Of course there were TV cameras and a few perfectly coiffed, attractive women wielding microphones and leaning forward to get comments from people in the crowd. The onlookers watched, cheered, took pictures, and occasionally devolved into little knots of heated debate (As usual, there were a few Freepers.) I stayed until the sheriff’s bus pulled up and the arrests began. The owner of the white beard, a round, elderly gentleman, was being escorted to the bus to the cheers of the crowd and a flurry of drums and horns from the band when I left.
M and I marched in the big demonstrations preceding the invasion of Iraq. We were wackos back then for opposing the war, but dear God, what a lot of us wackos there were! And today, now that we’ve been proven to have been right, there were no WMDS, the administration is pretty much admitting that it’s about oil, and the debacle many of us predicted is taking place, we’re STILL the wackos. To listen to some past cheerleaders for the war talk, our being right about it all is just another example of sheer, obnoxious cussedness on our part.
I still march occasionally. I have to go on the record. But I knew even back in 2003 that the people calling the shots in Washington didn’t give a goddamn what any of us thought. The appointment of Bush by the Supreme Court in 2000 should have delivered that message loud and clear, but people seemed absolutely unwilling to face the implications of it. The other day, Cheney put the meaning of that “election” into words when, on national TV, he smirked and responded with “So?” to the observation that two thirds of Americans don’t consider the war worthwhile. He then went on to say that no, he doesn’t care what the American people think.
What did we expect? Why didn’t we take to the streets eight years ago, build barricades, smash windows? Why didn’t we stop all of this before it began?
Out of the sunshine and the drumbeats and the shouts and into the lobby, up to the cool tiled hallway, and into the little office where I work. Turn on the computer, check my messages. There was another rehearsal yesterday, but it was a more subdued, low-voiced afternoon of T.S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” kept leaking into the room. Every now and then I’d hear several people intoning beyond the wall behind our bookshelf, “In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo.” It reminded me of that scene in ROSEMARY’S BABY when Rosemary hears the coven chanting their spells in the next apartment. At one point one of them got loose and began striding down the hall towards the café in search of tea, still reciting:
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,
And in short…”
I was afraid.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the war. When I got to work that afternoon, I heard chants and the thump of drums and saw a large crowd gathered at the junction of Market, Post, and New Montgomery. A group of demonstrators were staging a die-in. I couldn’t see many of them because they were lying down and surrounded by a cordon of police, but beyond the dark booted legs I caught a glimpse of a pink jacket and hat on one demonstrator, a white beard on another, an arm waving a bunch of tulips. Across Market other demonstrators watched, holding up a banner. There was even a band. Speakers stood on the periphery of the crowd that had gathered on my side of the street (the North side), waving leaflets and shouting. A local woman’s choir that I remember seeing five years ago at the big MLK day demonstration, sang “We Shall Overcome,” and a lithe, middle-aged couple in leotards did Yoga, a blanket spread before them dotted with flyers. Of course there were TV cameras and a few perfectly coiffed, attractive women wielding microphones and leaning forward to get comments from people in the crowd. The onlookers watched, cheered, took pictures, and occasionally devolved into little knots of heated debate (As usual, there were a few Freepers.) I stayed until the sheriff’s bus pulled up and the arrests began. The owner of the white beard, a round, elderly gentleman, was being escorted to the bus to the cheers of the crowd and a flurry of drums and horns from the band when I left.
M and I marched in the big demonstrations preceding the invasion of Iraq. We were wackos back then for opposing the war, but dear God, what a lot of us wackos there were! And today, now that we’ve been proven to have been right, there were no WMDS, the administration is pretty much admitting that it’s about oil, and the debacle many of us predicted is taking place, we’re STILL the wackos. To listen to some past cheerleaders for the war talk, our being right about it all is just another example of sheer, obnoxious cussedness on our part.
I still march occasionally. I have to go on the record. But I knew even back in 2003 that the people calling the shots in Washington didn’t give a goddamn what any of us thought. The appointment of Bush by the Supreme Court in 2000 should have delivered that message loud and clear, but people seemed absolutely unwilling to face the implications of it. The other day, Cheney put the meaning of that “election” into words when, on national TV, he smirked and responded with “So?” to the observation that two thirds of Americans don’t consider the war worthwhile. He then went on to say that no, he doesn’t care what the American people think.
What did we expect? Why didn’t we take to the streets eight years ago, build barricades, smash windows? Why didn’t we stop all of this before it began?
Out of the sunshine and the drumbeats and the shouts and into the lobby, up to the cool tiled hallway, and into the little office where I work. Turn on the computer, check my messages. There was another rehearsal yesterday, but it was a more subdued, low-voiced afternoon of T.S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” kept leaking into the room. Every now and then I’d hear several people intoning beyond the wall behind our bookshelf, “In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo.” It reminded me of that scene in ROSEMARY’S BABY when Rosemary hears the coven chanting their spells in the next apartment. At one point one of them got loose and began striding down the hall towards the café in search of tea, still reciting:
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,
And in short…”
I was afraid.