Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Here we are again. Tuesday, September 11.
I dunno.
Life is weird.
One day you’re going along living your regularly scheduled life, normal was normal as you always knew it. Then in the span of a few minutes normal would never be normal again.
Change is good. Even seemingly changes for the worse are supposed to hold linings of good – wisdom, awareness, strength, courage, character building life lessons.
Are you wiser, more aware, stronger or more courageous than you were six years ago?
I just feel more confused, despondent, helpless and scared.
We’re not supposed to admit that. We’re supposed to put on a brave front, stiff upper lip, shoulders back, chest up and peer defiantly into the future. The second we show any sign of weakness is the second we’re prone to attack.
Funny, though, it wasn’t showing vulnerability that got the US into this mess. It was a defiant show of egotism and bravado which made people hate America so much that they wanted to attack and kill us, bring us to our knees, teach us a lesson.
Maybe if we (collectively, elected officials included) had shown the world how human we were, how humane we can be things might have been different.
Or maybe not. It’s all hindsight and conjecture.
But I’m not embarrassed or concerned to admit that I am more confused, despondent, helpless and scared than I was prior to 9/11/01.
I know.
That’s unamerican.
And me, the daughter of a Marine.
That’s really unamerican.
Although.
My former Marine father also is confused. And I sense, lately, helpless and despondent, too. And if you ask him about his grandchildren the first thing he’ll say after rattling off their various virtues is that he’s scared for their future.
Maybe I’m too sensitive.
Maybe I have difficulty letting go.
Maybe I am too nice.
But if being too sensitive, caring and nice is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
It’s not that I look at other people as disrespectful or irreverent.
In fact I’m kind of jealous, somewhat curious and a little awed at how other people seem to talk and blog on as if this weren’t 9/11.
I wonder what it’s like to have words about Transformers or last night’s Chinese take-out or Britney. Life goes on, the American Dream continues, we have not been defeated, we are not on our knees begging for mercy. 9/11 schmeven. We’re American and nothing is going to stand in the way of our zeitgeist.
The only words fighting their way out of my head are a melancholic confused jumble of sadness. Most of them could be replaced by smirk, sigh and closed eye slow shake of the head.
It’s not that I don’t think about this on other days. In some ways it’s ever present and omnipresent.
Never Forget they say. That slogan is insipid and insulting. Who could forget? How could anyone forget?
Maybe it’s because the day feels so similar. September always feels a certain way to me. The sky takes on specific vivid hues of blue, nature has a particular September attitude. 9/11 was the perfect example of a textbook September day. And as it turns out, it often is a perfect September day. Today in Chicago it looks and feels precisely as it did in ’01. That’s probably a lot of it. My mind can’t help but wander back there. Sigh. Slow shake of the head.
See what I mean?
I don’t live in the past. I have one, and only one, huge regret, but, I don’t live in the past. Big picture. Forward momentum. I may be confused, despondent, helpless and scared, but I do focus on the big picture. I set goals to get there. I work at them. Sometimes I even accomplish them. But it is, after all, a big picture.
And much as I would love to have other words assaulting me, go along all “tra la la, leave it in the past, get on with your future,” there’s an ingrained respect, empathy and awareness which won’t allow those words or thoughts out today.
Oh sure, I still have work and deadlines, a doctor appointment, dry cleaning to fetch and phone calls to make. Let freedom ring. Life does go on, the American Way is preserved. Democracy reigns supreme.
In that context I suppose it is important for people to slide 9/11 on the back burner of their subconscious. After all, Britney was a mess, Transformers was a top grossing movie of the Summer and what’s more American than Chinese take-out?
True enough. But I would like to have the victims of 9/11 enjoying their freedom to trash Britney, see movies and order Chinese take-out. And the fact that they had those privileges taken away from them bothers me. A lot.
The time honored conventional wisdom when someone dies is that they’d want us to carry on with our lives, remember their life, not their death.
But that doesn’t seem quite right in this case. If I died in 9/11 I think I’d be annoyed (though not the least bit surprised) that the top blog buzz topic on 9/11/07 is Britney Spears.
I'd like to think it wasn't all for nothing and that it wasn't reduced to some ridiculous pithy slogan and a glittery American flag ribbon web-banner on blogs.
But there again, that's hindsight and conjecture. I didn't die in 9/11. So how can I have the nerve to even presume what a victim would want or think if they were to observe life six years post-9/11? I can't.
Yet I don't have the nerve to blog about Britney or movies or Chinese take-out, either.
1:15 PM
