Rejoicing in Being Alive

September 30, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

Climbers wait­ing for sun­rise on top of Mt. Fuji, Japan, 1994.

I was watch­ing an an­i­mated samu­rai drama late last night af­ter re­turn­ing from work, in which the samu­rai hero ad­mon­ishes a woman com­rade for wish­ing to die. “I can’t stand any­one who takes life so cheaply,” he snarls be­fore turn­ing his back on her and walk­ing away.

It got me think­ing. Look out­side and life takes on a myr­iad of forms. Like prob­ing fin­gers it pushes into every pos­si­ble mold to form it­self. We like to think of our­selves as some­how unique and God-​​chosen, but re­ally we are just an­other ex­pres­sion of all that is danc­ing around us. Like notes in a cos­mic opera.

And the spark that sus­tains the breath of the mar­i­onette in each crea­ture can be snuffed out like… THAT! All it takes is a lit­tle pair of scissors.

I think that samu­rai was right. He wasn’t be­ing ar­ro­gant or ma­cho. He wanted some­one he cared about to value the pre­cious gift of liv­ing. It is the most pre­cious gift we have in the world. Every day we should take a mo­ment to re­flect on this. To stand still and ac­knowl­edge that the heart is beat­ing. To look out the win­dow and re­mem­ber that you hold some­thing flick­er­ing within that al­lows you to par­take of the light of the ris­ing sun with­out. To rec­og­nize the flick­er­ing flame of life in every crea­ture around you, no mat­ter how big or small. To dare to nod to the even­tu­al­ity that the flame will ex­tin­guish, and that it is all right. Re­joice in the brief mo­ments we have! So brief, so beau­ti­ful and ex­quis­ite, so rare.

…By Any Other Name…

September 30, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

It’s amaz­ing what lengths peo­ple will go to to jus­tify mad­ness. Now they are talk­ing “ Su­per­bombs”, as if blow­ing up thou­sands of peo­ple with­out set­ting them aglow af­ter­wards re­ally makes much of a dif­fer­ence. “Daisy-​​Cutters”, “Bunker Busters”, the abom­inable “MOAB’s”… all with these ado­les­cent nom­in­cla­tures straight out of video games (I can imag­ine these bomb de­sign­ers sit­ting at their clut­tered desks with their ties tourniqet­ted around their heads, heav­ily mum­bling “Du­fous Boul­ders”, “Girlie Splat­ters”, “Dino-​​Pizzas”…).

The more I read the more the im­age of Goya’s paint­ing of Sat­urn eat­ing his chil­dren is con­jured up. Why can this con­nect in my mind and wake hor­ror, but only amuse­ment in those who love war and destruction?

Two Cups of Coffee

September 28, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

Cow say­ing good­bye from the Lake Re­gion, Eng­land, 1995

I can’t help it: I love cof­fee. It sends me ric­o­chet­ing off the walls when­ever I drink it, but, af­ter a cupped hand­ful of moun­tain spring wa­ter, there is no other drink that quite fills the spot. There is some­thing about the bit­ter, furry bite that greets the mouth with a hos­pi­tal­ity not un­like a warm em­brace from a lover, and the de­sire for more never quite slips away, no mat­ter how much you re­solve to ab­stain. Walk into a room puls­ing with the musk of cof­fee and, like the scent of a lover’s body, the an­ten­nae in your brain spring up and the floor turns to clouds.

With my di­a­betes I re­ally shouldn’t be drink­ing the stuff, and for the most part I re­strain my­self. But oc­ca­sion­ally the gas­tro­nomic bad boy in my taste buds gulls me into adul­tery against the jug of fresh lemon-​​flavored wa­ter in my re­frig­er­a­tor. I woke up this morn­ing un­re­pen­tant af­ter a brief af­fair with two cups of cof­fee last night, which kept me up half the night, half deliri­ous and lust­ing for more.

To my dis­may I found the cof­fee jar empty when I at­tempted to steal one last sip a lit­tle while ago. All that was left were the mug and the spoon. Even a look through the rest of the kitchen draw­ers pro­vided no relief.

Everyone’s 2 Cent’s Worth

September 28, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

Car­toon I drew last Jan­u­ary be­fore the war started, in re­sponse to a car­toon that the well-​​known Amer­i­can car­toon­ist Ted Rall sent me, claim­ing in­spi­ra­tion from a let­ter I wrote him.

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Great. Just what Iraq and the world re­ally need: an­other in­spired and well-​​informed con­tributer to jus­tice and machismo: Bruce Willis.

And when the world re­ally does need some kind of uni­ver­sal reg­u­la­tor for jus­tice for all peo­ple around the world, World Court, the big­gies slip out and ridicule the first attempts.

How does one re­tain any kind of faith in the world lead­ers and in hu­man­ity when it all be­comes a farce?

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