C I P R I A N I

I find myself here at the end of the day – I observe in my journal that I haven’t accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish today, though I began my lament with about an hour left in the day.

I was flipping through a Rolling Stone that I wanted to get through and discovered a new Peter Gabriel album I wanted to download.  These weren’t necessarily things on the “to do” list for the day – but coming here was.

Though I made the decision to complete a short, private essay with a few moments left in the day, I downloaded the new Peter Gabriel and find myself listening to a lot of the tunes in my collection.  And among them the new track from the new album – an orchestral, instrumental arrangement of “Don’t Give Up” comes up and I’m filled with inspiration and energy … 

Plus I think it’s 100 degrees in my room and I can’t quite go to sleep – it’s 11:25 as I type this … And this wasn’t the essay I wanted to write here.   I’ve been meaning to come here and discuss things that might be a little less inspiring but I want to talk about rememberance.

It’s a strange thing to me, rememberance.  With the great men, I understand – Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John Lennon.  But there’s the flip side to that – the other guys that tried to extinguish their flame, only for the heroes to burn brighter…and their myth and legend and lesson and the wisdom and the inspiration…that’s all well and good, that martyrdom for a greater cause … 

The score for Last Temptation, Gabriel’s Passion is playing as I type this by the way…

…but I can’t help but think the motivation, at least in the case of Oswald was a twisted need to be remembered as well.  And certainly Hitler needed some attention … 

And there’s the difficult thing:  These horrors, especially in the case of Hitler, such twisted carnage which of course – must be remembered … but – Isn’t that just what the son of a bitch wanted?

Isn’t this the case with Bin Laden … and back to Osawald…

Certainly we can’t forget what they did and obviously we must remember these terrible acts so that they never happen again … but there is a such a twisted irony that evil madmen clasp their hands so tightly to these moments in time…

So we must embrace this idea of the Phoenix rising from the ashes.  The triumph of the memory of the good men that live on … But this is difficult.  Especially in the case of so much life lost so futilely.  

And is “rememberance” the best way to pay tribute to the fallen?  I’m certainly not suggesting that we “forget” them – but to remember the victim is to also remember the criminal.   And for the purposes of wisdom, I guess this is useful – but do we really as a civilized human race need to be reminded that we shouldn’t slaughter our own?  And when I mean our own, I mean all of us.  That we shouldn’t assasinate?  That we should be tolerant?  

Do we, as the human race, after all these years, really need to be reminded to behave as, well, humans?

I guess the sad answer is yes.  I guess now, in the waning hours of the night, I’m searching for a bright side.

But I guess searching for the bright side in the dead of night is perhaps a fitting irony to this exercise.