We lost a dear friend yesterday, someone who attended our wedding, someone who held our son, only a few hours old, someone who joined in our amazement and celebration of life. Her death was swift and most likely without prolonged suffering. But that matters not a wit to a four year old who is having a difficult time accepting that the images on TV, which we've since turned off, are not 'pretend' -- that his auntie is gone, that thousands more aunts and uncles, sons and daughters, husbands and wives are gone.

We've talked to him. We've tried our best to smooth his furrowed brow and help him cope. I wish down to the core of my soul I could return him to a state of innocence, to restore in his young brain a quiet ignorance of the ways of the world, but like all Americans this morning, he is forever changed, forever made aware of the stupidity of man.

I've assayed my intellect. I've consulted my faith. I've read the words of men and women wiser than me. But to make sense of any of this I've had to surrender to the chaos and look for that inner darkness that is not quite loneliness nor despair (that whistle and whine among the flashes and booms of war) but something darker which erases all sense of self and unteaches all the things I thought I knew.

   These fragments I have shored against my ruins
   Why then Ile fit you.  Hieronymo's mad againe.
   Datta.  Dayadhvam.  Damyata.
          Shantih shantih shantih
                    from The Wasteland

Peace, peace, peace.

Al