"I do have a strategy," Reagan said after one detailed briefing on the challenge of the Soviet Union: "We win, they lose!"
(From a Wall Street Journal article From Berlin to Baghdad by Fouad Ajami, Tuesday 11/10/2009.)
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Strategy
King Kong
Up, down, up and down, up then down, like a rollercoaster, someone described my present life to me. It's not what they call a bipolar disorder, it's what country singer Randy Travis called on his first album the storms of life. One friend's family is all shaken up because a brother committed suicide hanging himself in his guitar shop, another acquaintance is traveling to Brazil to marry his sweetheart. Happy, lucky man. Normal reactions to events. Me, I'm on a rollercoaster. Events of two, three years ago are ancient history now, and even their lingering consequences don't bother me any more, but events of the past 5 months are what has been throwing the ship on the rocks. Metaphor mix minestrone.
You were like King Kong four weeks ago, said a friend reacting to my story, you were on top of the Empire State Building, before the airplanes flew in and knocked you down to earth. Lower than the earth, I tell him. I find myself in Hades, abandoning all hope. You're vulnerable now, says the friend whose relative killed himself. Indeed, I answer, I have four opportunities every weekday to jump in front of a train. See a professional, advises he, echoing a close relative. I recently wrote another friend living abroad that among Californians faith in therapists runs deeper than faith in God Almighty. I refuse to confide in a stranger with a diploma hanging on a wall. Done that once.
In the state of utter despair, you realize for the first time how little matters in the world where your life is concerned. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today a memorial service is being held for the victims of the Ford Hood massacre. Headlines and news of disasters, killings, accidents, anniversaries, flu vaccinations, medical discoveries, arts events, births and deaths, celebrity rumours, nothing changes the situation you fell into, nothing affects it, improves it, worsens it. You're alone.
You were like King Kong four weeks ago, said a friend reacting to my story, you were on top of the Empire State Building, before the airplanes flew in and knocked you down to earth. Lower than the earth, I tell him. I find myself in Hades, abandoning all hope. You're vulnerable now, says the friend whose relative killed himself. Indeed, I answer, I have four opportunities every weekday to jump in front of a train. See a professional, advises he, echoing a close relative. I recently wrote another friend living abroad that among Californians faith in therapists runs deeper than faith in God Almighty. I refuse to confide in a stranger with a diploma hanging on a wall. Done that once.
In the state of utter despair, you realize for the first time how little matters in the world where your life is concerned. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today a memorial service is being held for the victims of the Ford Hood massacre. Headlines and news of disasters, killings, accidents, anniversaries, flu vaccinations, medical discoveries, arts events, births and deaths, celebrity rumours, nothing changes the situation you fell into, nothing affects it, improves it, worsens it. You're alone.
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