Air. Just a little bit. Trapped underneath a thin film of plastic.

That's what tripped me up today as I was looking forward to getting my visa to return home. The once delayed consular interview went well, considering I'd rushed over at dawn to make it in time through Mumbai traffic, after two hours of sleep, stood in another line for an hour before bring scanned and frisked through security to yet another waiting area, clutching my passport, waiting for my number to be called.. Anxiety, adrenaline, anticipation. The process went smoothly enough and there didn't seem to be any glitch as I answered the consular officer's questions about what I do and where. She seemed satisfied enough about my Outstandingness for the O-1 visa. It looked like she was about to approve the visa, tell me to collect the passport later in the evening. And I prepared to heave a sigh of relief.

Then she examined the ID page of my passport closely, and discovered: some air trapped in the laminate, over parts of my photo and some of the writing. She decided that posed too big a risk of the laminate peeling off, so she said they would not stamp the visa in this passport. I must now get a new one, a new book. Just like that.

And so began yet another round of red-tape, this time the homegrown Indian kind. Scrambling to find information about applying for this new book, racing to the office where I had one of my first passports issued in Mumbai. Only to be told that my address puts me in another, newer jurisdiction. Another dash across the length of the city, only to arrive an hour after the counters are closed for the day (at noon!!) at this office! Then someone tells me the process of applying online, saying there is a "tatkal" or expedited process I should try - one that would take as little as 10 days!! There goes my flight reservation for Friday night, and perhaps another couple hundred bucks in airline penalties for changing it again. Unless, somehow, we find a sympathetic miracle worker in the bureaucracy willing to help a brother out. Fat chance. But old friends are rallying around, hoping to find a quicker way. Fingers crossed that this red tape is loose enough for me to wriggle free quickly.

Meanwhile, back in Fresno, students are wondering when they're going to see their professor this semester. My colleagues' generosity is stretched quite far already, covering my classes. Grad students are likely  even more frustrated. At home, our 6-year-old has been sick with fever and asthma, our family doctor wondering if it is time to move her to Children's Hospital. And Kaberi is at her wits' end, juggling her own new teaching workload while managing both kids on her own - a handful even when they aren't sick.

But I remain stuck half a world away, for an unknown while longer. At least I know I will get that visa... that bit of assurance will have to be enough to ride through this new turbulence. This is what you've been signed up for, as a dispersing worker in this world of globalization, which does all it can to smooth the flows of capital and profits. But what about people? Better strap in, there will be turbulence. Hang on.

Update (22 Feb):

Spent another morning at the Thane Passport Office, eventually even meeting personally with the head honcho, the chief Passport Officer himself. He listened to me describe my predicament with some sympathy, but said he couldn't really expedite things too much - in part because of procedures; but also because my current passport was issued in San Francisco before the passport service started digitizing their records, a process that is still ongoing - which means they won't have easy access to my previous file to verify information in the passport! After first saying I may not even be able to do a Tatkal (urgent) application at all, he then pointed me to ways to get the information certified by some high-ranking govt. officials in an affidavit (some forms called Annexure F and I), so that's what I will have to do now. Meanwhile he also confirmed the appointment I had received through the online application portal which now has my application queued up to start processing on the 28th. He asked me to come back to him then so he will review the application along with the verification certificate and other documents, and start processing the new passport on a Tatkal basis. That may then take another 1-7 days (although most likely less than 7) he said, and smiled sympathetically, suggesting I change my travel plans. Add another 1-2 days to get the US visa stamp in the new passport - and I'm looking at potentially another two weeks here!!!

And so this limbo stretches out some more... and I begin to wonder if this is some punishment, me being stuck here now, to make up for all the time I didn't manage to spend here while my parents were still alive...

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Air. Just a little bit. Trapped underneath a thin film of plastic.

That's what tripped me up today as I was looking forward to getting my visa to return home. The once delayed consular interview went well, considering I'd rushed over at dawn to make it in time through Mumbai traffic, after two hours of sleep, stood in another line for an hour before bring scanned and frisked through security to yet another waiting area, clutching my passport, waiting for my number to be called.. Anxiety, adrenaline, anticipation. The process went smoothly enough and there didn't seem to be any glitch as I answered the consular officer's questions about what I do and where. She seemed satisfied enough about my Outstandingness for the O-1 visa. It looked like she was about to approve the visa, tell me to collect the passport later in the evening. And I prepared to heave a sigh of relief.

Then she examined the ID page of my passport closely, and discovered: some air trapped in the laminate, over parts of my photo and some of the writing. She decided that posed too big a risk of the laminate peeling off, so she said they would not stamp the visa in this passport. I must now get a new one, a new book. Just like that.

And so began yet another round of red-tape, this time the homegrown Indian kind. Scrambling to find information about applying for this new book, racing to the office where I had one of my first passports issued in Mumbai. Only to be told that my address puts me in another, newer jurisdiction. Another dash across the length of the city, only to arrive an hour after the counters are closed for the day (at noon!!) at this office! Then someone tells me the process of applying online, saying there is a "tatkal" or expedited process I should try - one that would take as little as 10 days!! There goes my flight reservation for Friday night, and perhaps another couple hundred bucks in airline penalties for changing it again. Unless, somehow, we find a sympathetic miracle worker in the bureaucracy willing to help a brother out. Fat chance. But old friends are rallying around, hoping to find a quicker way. Fingers crossed that this red tape is loose enough for me to wriggle free quickly.

Meanwhile, back in Fresno, students are wondering when they're going to see their professor this semester. My colleagues' generosity is stretched quite far already, covering for me in my classes and committees. Grad students are likely even more frustrated. At home, our 6-year-old has been sick with fever and asthma, our family doctor wondering if it is time to move her to Children's Hospital. And Kaberi is at her wits' end, juggling her own new teaching workload while managing both kids on her own - a handful even when they aren't ill.

But I remain stuck half a world away, likely for an unknown while longer. At least I know I will get that visa... that bit of assurance will have to be enough to ride through this new turbulence. This is what you've been signed up for, as a dispersing worker in this world of globalization, which does all it can to smooth the flows of capital and profits. But people? Better strap in, there will be turbulence. Hang on.

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Thank you, my friends.

The past several weeks have been difficult ones. I write this as a note of thanks to all of our global villagers who have rallied around us in the wake of my mother's passing two weeks ago. I wrote to keep my anguish at bay while I traveled to her deathbed, and then shared what I wrote as a way to shield myself from having to relive the horror of what happened in the retelling to all the friends who would want to know, to share the grief, to express condolences. I am not very good with the spoken word, especially under such trying circumstances, but seem to have found a better outlet in writing. I am grateful to everyone who read and left comments and condolences, on this blog, on my facebook wall, in emails, and telephone conversations. Thank you, those of you who knew her, and also those who didn't know her and don't even really know me, but have shared my grief. I have been overwhelmed that so many tell me my writing touched them, moved them to tears, and in those tears I hope to drown the flames that took my mother.

While I am bad at knowing what to say to people expressing condolences and sympathy, it is even harder to respond to the many who said they would pray for her, and me, and said "may god rest her soul in peace". I turned away from religion a long time ago, as did my siblings. Even Aai, who had followed many a ritual in our childhoods as a matter of course, had given up her pujas and prayers over the past couple of decades, preferring instead to read Marxist accounts of our cultural evolution such as "Volga te Ganga" (Marathi for Volga to Ganga), and writing angry feminist notes in her notebooks raging against the patriarchy. That is, when she wasn't worshipping at the television altar of that other reigning religion in India: cricket. I am not sure, therefore, what she would have said to those wishing her soul peace in god, for she too believed in neither soul nor god.

Some of her loss of faith I know about from conversations we had during college days, when we, her kids, brought back what we were discovering in science and philosophy, following the path she herself had set us out on in insisting we become scholars. At least after she had reconciled herself to my failure to become a doctor, her first and biggest ambition. It was that disappointment, deepening through years of frustration at my lack of financial success, which made it difficult in later years for me to talk to her about anything as exalted as faith or souls. Reading some of her notes now, I regret not having been able to engage her in conversations deeper than the ones we had about mundane things. I do know, though, that she never really went back to her seasonal religious rituals, and only wanted to do the bare minimum asked for by society even when her husband died seven years ago.

Some of the nurses tried to tell us that in her delirium in the ICU, before she slipped into unconsciousness, she had blurted out something about god, and had appeared to be chanting some religious hymns. Did she turn back to religion and rediscover god in her final moments, as we atheists are told is inevitable? I don't know. My sister, who was with her, talking to her, holding her hand as she fell into her final sleep, doesn't recount god figuring much in their conversation. Vaijoo said Aai held her hand to her heart and asked her what was happening, why she had gathered friends and relatives, was she going to die, was this the end? Earlier, looking at the burned skin on her arms while on the way to the ICU, she had laughed at the absurdity of her accident. Now it had sunk in, and perhaps she was afraid that this was it, there was no coming back from this. What will happen next, she asked Vaijoo. Masking her own emotional distress, Vaijoo said she didn't know, but that a lot of people who loved her were gathered outside, including her beloved brother whom she hadn't seen in 20 years, and that her son was also on his way to be with her shortly. She squeezed her hand, looked into her eyes, told her to rest, try to be calm, and go to sleep. Then the doctor came, gently slipped Aai's hand out of Vaijoo's and into his own and told her he would stay until she was fully asleep.

That was the last lucid conversation my mother had, hardly regaining consciousness at all over the next 36 hours before she was gone. I don't know how much room there was for god or religion in the cracks of her fading consciousness, nor do I find much solace in seeking out god to explain the accident that took her from us. Nevertheless, I deeply appreciate the sentiment from friends and strangers who said they prayed for her. Rituals of mourning are, after all, more for the still living left behind by the dead. So, thank you again, my friends, for your condolences.

I also find greater comfort in knowing something I know would have evoked wonder and awe in her spirit as well: that we are all made of stardust, that, as my favorite contemporary preacher put it (at c.2:40 in the following video), "Not only do we exist in this universe, it is the universe itself that exists within us". So allow me to leave you with these cosmic (and hopefully not too disturbing) thoughts from Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

Thank you.

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Among some of my other character flaws, my parents instilled in me a lifelong passion for the game of cricket, turned me quite early into another hopeless fan of the habitually hapless Indian cricket team. Didn't do a lot to encourage me to actually learn to play the sport with any level of skill, mind you - for that couldn't possibly be my studious brahmin destiny; I was meant to be a Doctor! Mere hopeless passionate fandom it was for me when it came to cricket.

Many a times in my childhood, long before anyone in our neighborhood had television, Aai and Appa woke me up in the wee hours, or let me stay up into the wee hours, to follow the Indian team's often dismal exploits on tours abroad. We would cluster around the shortwave radio, fiddle with the dial to try and catch distant crackling voices, from Australia, England, the West Indies, New Zealand, narrating the ebbs and flows of 5-day test matches from remote, exotic sounding cities and hallowed cricket grounds. I would let the commentators conjure up in my sleepy head images of Sunil Gavaskar's perfect straight drive, Gundappa Vishwanath's delicate late cut, Erapalli Prasanna putting the ball into magical flight. More often though, we would be cursing and groaning at why the batsmen kept hanging their bat outside the off-stump, gasping when they were trying to avoid body blows from the fast bowlers, moaning at how our bowling lacked any pace at all on those zippy foreign pitches, sighing in the habitual resignation of the Indian fan. And we would cling to that shining individual performance - that hundred from Sunny or Vishy, that five-wicket haul from the crazy spinning wrists of Chandrashekhar - even as the team as a whole routinely got thrashed outside home grounds, and sometimes even at home. You can only imagine how we celebrated when the team actually won a game or even a rare series or trophy!

I drifted away from the sport in the 1990s, having moved to America where they were passionate about stranger ballgames that could never capture my passion like cricket had. By then television had already replaced radio commentary (especially of the short-wave variety which proved impossible to catch in America), but there was no internet yet, with its covert video streams of live matches, and textual coverage on cricinfo. So I missed the first decade of the breathtaking career of that reigning star (nay, supernova) in the cricketing firmament: Sachin Tendulkar. I would read about him, try to catch glimpses of his magic with the bat whenever I was home in Bombay, hear about him on the phone from Aai and Appa, who were becoming part of the countless legions of his fans. It was his odds-defying boy-on-the-burning-deck exploits that rallied the nation even as the team continued to perform poorly, especially overseas. I am sure my parents continued to wake up in the wee hours, huddled around the TV now, hot cups of tea warming their hands, to watch Sachin bat, just like they had listened for Sunny's straight drive a generation ago.

Judge their parenting as you may, but walking into school bleary-eyed, and dozing through classes until recess because of having stayed/woken up late/early, was as much a part of the rituals that punctuated my childhood as the series of festivals and holidays we all celebrated. And often, as we wanted to be awake for the more excitingly anticipated games, Aai would make us cups of hot tea, with just that perfect blend of milky sweetness I now try to recreate in California when I'm up again in the wee hours trying to desperately tune into some (pirated) live video stream on the internet showing me my beloved team's exploits, which had become hugely better during this millennium even as Sachin continued to pile on the records.

I now know that on that fateful tuesday morning last week, Aai had woken up early again because she wanted to watch her beloved Sachin walk out in whites in Adelaide, in his last test match in Australia, still chasing that record 100th international century that has eluded him for almost a year now. No doubt she too had held her breath, like a billion others, every time he walked out to bat during that year, only to let it out in disappointment as he continued to sparkle in patches, but never quite seemed able to reignite the fire that had led him to this threshold of glory: the first (and likely only, for a while, or ever) batsman in the game to score 100 centuries in international games. An arbitrary landmark in so many ways, yet it kept him, his fans, and my Aai, on tenterhooks match after match, even as the rest of the team too crumpled after the glory of winning the World Cup last year, to now lose two major test series abroad in a row. Not merely lose, but lose by huge margins, getting a thrashing as bad as any I can remember even in previous generations. This farewell Australian tour for Sachin and his generation had already piled on plenty of misery. The series was lost. All that remained was the hope that he would get to that individual landmark.

She woke up early to catch the start of the Adelaide test beaming live on the television. And, as usual, she went to make herself a cup of tea. Perhaps she was too distracted by the game to notice her sari catch fire. The Indian team's misery continued over the next four days while she battled for her life in the hospital. They lost the match not too long after she gave up her life. Sachin once again did not manage to reach his coveted, cursed 100th hundred.

I hope he never does.

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Sari. Stove. Fire.

Ingredients of life and death for women in India. Elements of sustenance, and of nightmares. Fatal accidents, not uncommon... often but euphemisms, for suicides, for dowry deaths.

Real accidents happen too, just from mixing those ingredients.

She had escaped one such accident, I dimly remember, back in my childhood when all we had was a pump-action kerosene stove. Her pallu (that lovely, deadly, end of the sari that women fly like a banner across their shoulders...) caught the flames. She was alert and quick enough to unravel the sari and drop it to the floor even as my sister ran to stomp on the flames.

Not this time. All she wanted was a cup of tea, not a fight for her life.

She's much older now, bent with age, and chose to live on her own some years after my father died. Tired of being cramped in her daughter's small apartment, perhaps. More likely - simply, finally, wanting that room of her own. She seemed happier being on her own too, by all accounts, although it was harder for me to reach her on the phone. It is the phone that brought me, in fragmented conversations laden with shock, despair, anguish, news of her latest brush with sari, stove, fire.

She woke up early that morning, as usual. And as usual, she needed her morning cup of tea. On a gas stove this time. I'm not sure if it was the pallu this time, or gas in the air from her having left the valve open too long. There was a flash, perhaps a small explosion which blew out windowpanes. And her sari was in flames, spreading too fast for her slowed reflexes to stop them. Yet she remained alert and strong and practical (she always was practical) enough to open the door and shout for help. Help, from neighbors, my sister, even the police, arrived within minutes - yet too late for her skin. perhaps too late for her life...

Emergency medical care. Hospitals. Nightmares of their own for most in modern India (Shining). Police investigating the fire sent her off to the ill-equipped, overloaded civil hospital. In my sister's car since the ambulance didn't show up in time. Several hours she sat in that hospital, mostly unattended. She is too old the doctor said, to hope for recovery from such burns. Even though she was still talking, even laughing at the absurdity of the accident. Take her to the national burn center in Airoli, they said. She is too old, said the burn center over the phone, filtering her out in their triage... over the phone... Seventy-three is old in India, to the surprise of my American friends. Human life is abundant in my bustling country. Abundant, and cheap. And ages rapidly. Too abundant, too cheap, in a culture too fatalistic for anyone to do anything about the ever-present epidemic of sari, stove, gas, fire. Accidents, real, and also staged, murders labeled 'dowry deaths'. So at 73, she is too old for anyone to give any hope of recovery. Even as she lies in a private hospital bed, conscious, in pain. Alert enough to ask if she can sleep. In control enough to ask if she can sit up upon waking. Although 95 of her skin has peeled off, and the doctors won't offer any hope at least until the first 48 hours have passed. As I write this, in the airport, waiting to board my flight from America to go see her, it has been 40 hours since the fire. She is fighting for her life.

All she wanted was to make herself a cup of tea, in that room of her own.

Sari. Stove. Fire.

-------

POSTSCRIPT  (27 January 2012):

About 6 hours after I arrived at her bedside, tried to get her attention, she finally gave up the fight. It turned out to be too much even for her stubborn self. She did hang on long enough for me to reach her while she was still alive, barely. Whether she registered my presence at any level of consciousness, I cannot begin to guess. All I know is: Aai is no more. She fought the effects of that devastating fire for 3 full days. I have just consigned her to the flames again, beseeching Agni to finish the job.

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I stood by the sea

watching a procession 

of mourners.

Clouds...

sombre, pensive

stood up, dark

against the glow

of the funeral pyre

to which they had just

consigned the Sun.

Waves... emotions welling up

in the brest of the ocean

floundered against the rocks,

lost in the increasing gloom.

The still wind caressed the Earth,

murmuring -

"Gaia, we are orphans today."

- Words written by me on 29 September 1986 at  Marine Drive, Bombay.

Image captured by me on 2 January 2012 at Morro Bay, California

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Anirban Mahapatra (aka Bhalomanush, a good man I have come to know on Twitter) recently (well, a month ago) shared with me a thought-provoking essay he had written contemplating some of the deepest questions in conservation: where do humans fit into the rest of life on our planet? Is it hubris on our part to think we can save the planet or that we are even superior to other species when we have all evolved from a common ancestor? What does it matter if species go extinct, when we know that most species that have ever evolved are already extinct, and everything must die eventually? Questions that certainly haunt me as I try to find meaning in my own research and educational efforts aimed at conserving biological diversity on this little blue dot we inhabit. The essay, written in the form of an inner dialogue in the author's mind, resonated with me immediately. Yet Bhalomanush said it was among the least read of his blog posts! Surely, this contemplation deserves more attention, so I offered to share it here to try to reach a broader audience interested in reconciliation ecology. He was kind enough to send it to me as a guest post! The essay is titled after a well-known "raga" from Indian classical music, the name of which literally translates as "Swansong" - an appropriate title, I think. I hope you like it - and if you do, please pay the author's own blog a visit and let him know.

An almost apocalyptic image of the fiery sky at dusk earlier this week at Morro Bay beach in California. via flickr.com

~~~

Hamsadhwani

by Anirban Mahapatra

I cannot recall when I first heard someone say that humans should try to save the earth from imminent destruction. It may have been written on a sign, or I may have read it in column. It is a common argument: humans need to act now to save the earth or we might propel the planet toward destruction.

The possibility that one day we will inflict the full force of our ruthlessness on the earth is quite real. At some point in our history, we may succeed in pushing the climate to a point of no return, we may annihilate ourselves through a cold and dark nuclear winter, or we may generate a grave pestilence against which we have no defense. But can we really destroy the earth?

No. The earth needs no saving.

But how can you say that humans are not capable of destroying the earth? That our planet needs no saving? In a very short span of time, humans have put a physical mark on the landscape like no other species before us. We’ve lit up the night sky and etched wonderworks which are visible from space. We’ve climbed the tops of mountains and dived into the depths of the oceans. 

For the earth is not just any planet. It is the only one we know which teems with life. The myriad life forms on earth are as much a part of the planet as the oceans, ice-shelves, and canyons. And we’re killing these life forms off at an alarming rate. If we continue to impact the environment, won’t that threaten living organisms which are a constant part of this earth? As for anthropogenic climate change and nuclear war – wouldn’t events such as these be cataclysmic for the planet?   

The earth does need saving.

Here is a hypothetical scenario: if someday the technology that aliens in science-fiction novels use to pulverize the earth becomes a reality for our descendants, would they contemplate using it? There is not an iota of doubt in my mind that they would. For all of our skills, we are still capable of extremely short-sighted suicidal tendencies. We don’t lack the impudence to think about destroying the planet: we lack the technical ability. The earth will survive because we can’t destroy it, regardless of how hard we try. At worst, we are a  pesky comet or a supervolcano. We are not a heating sun or a supernova. Life, as it exists on our planet is supported by the alignments of the planets, the precise temperature of the sun, the gravitational pull of the moon, and other planetary and geological wonders which we cannot violate.

Speaking of extinctions, most species that existed on this planet – by some estimates, 99% or more – became extinct before we could contemplate our place here. We helped death along by precipitating the demise of the passenger pigeon and the dodo. Before we become extinct, we will continue to kill off other species. Perhaps, in our final dying moments, the number of species which are wiped out will spike. But the earth will survive as it has in the past. We are in a hurry to modify our surroundings because our lifetimes are short, but evolution does not follow human timetables. With time, traces of the ugly abominations we erected will vanish and new life forms will develop and cherish this wonderful planet. Maybe they will be wiser than us? We will never know. When our time comes, we will go. The earth will still survive.

Are you saying that if the earth is physically destroyed that would be a tragedy, but that the extinction of life around us is inevitable? If the earth changes because of us, then we have failed to save it. You can’t deny that humans have modified the planet like no other single species before us. If we don’t save the wondrous life around us, wouldn’t that be a tragedy? Don’t you feel a pang of sorrow when you see a polar bear stranded on shrinking ice knowing that it might be too late to save the species? When you know that there are plants in the Amazon River basin that are dying because of massive deforestation to feed our so-called progress? We can do something about it. We should do something about it. We’re an advanced species with the gift of conscious thought and the power to make decisions that impact our planet.

I never condoned inaction. We’re currently in the middle of a mass extinction, no doubt. This worries me immensely and I wince to think about how many forms of life we are destroying each moment, some perhaps, without our knowledge. The fact remains that the earth is the only planet I will ever know. I wish I had many lifetimes to study it, to observe it, and to simply be filled with wonder. I’ll do whatever I can to save the polar bear, the panda, and the tiger, even though for some species it may be too late. I do not attempt to explain why I feel this way logically, but I consider this part of what makes me human. Our descendants deserve to enrich their own lives by knowing the life we have around us; by killing it off, we’re failing both our ancestors and our descendants.

On a human scale, the plants we farm and the animals we’ve domesticated have changed irreversibly already. As natural surroundings change, so do organisms. Plants and animals should live unaltered according to my own convenient whim. But this is an anthropocentric view. My curiosity, my sorrow, my acknowledgement of the scale of tragedy of death has no bearing on what happened billions of years on this planet and what will happen for billions of years after my infinitely short life. What I can do is to try to prevent destruction in my own lifetime.

I’ve heard the argument that humans are an advanced species, but why do we take that at face value? How are we superior? There are other organisms which exceed us in numbers: there are many more tiny bacteria in the human body than “human” cells.  There are organisms which can live in more extreme environments like the boiling cauldrons of sulfurous springs. Many species of bacteria can replicate in the span of minutes. Tortoises live longer than us by decades.

And species we consider primitive? If all living organisms trace their roots back to common ancestors that arose several billion years ago, if we all evolved over the same billions of years in a constant struggle to survive in our changing niches, how are any more advanced or primitive than others? The dodo was no less suited for its environment than the monstrously-oversized chicken is in an assembly line farm where it thrives. We precipitated its demise. Who is to say that someday some other organism doesn’t precipitate our own? Neither is the sloth lazy nor the snake vile, in an absolute sense. For all of our superiority, a minor change in atmospheric temperature might wipe us out, without causing the least discomfort to a unicellular bacterium.

That is not to say that humans are not unique. We possess intellect. We can manipulate tools. We can record our histories and archive our collective thoughts. We have certain skills which no other organism possesses. We can analyze and learn from our mistakes, when we choose to do so. To be able to express emotions, record abstract thoughts, and attempt to understand surroundings are both collectively and individually a blessing. I am grateful for the written words on this screen, longevity due to modern medicine, notes of Hamsadhwani, the frescoes of Ajanta, bitter dark-chocolate, and comfortable walking shoes, among countless other gifts.

But, quintessentially, in our minds humans are the most advanced species on the planet because we are human. Perhaps, since I am a member of the species, I find nothing wrong with this prismatic viewpoint. But, increasingly I believe that the earth was not created for us and will not perish with us. There is nothing divine about us. We are not the Chosen Ones.

If this world is all we have- and there is no compelling reason in my mind to believe otherwise- there is nothing more spiritual than trying to preserve it. Especially with the sobering knowledge that ultimately it is an impossible feat.

In reality that is what saving the earth is about. It is about saving ourselves and the life we know and value.

~~~

 

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via flickr.com

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As my American friends celebrate / breathe a sigh of relief at the announcement today that the US war on Iraq is finally officially over, I can't help but go back to this brilliant history lesson (which I have posted here before):

via youtube.com

So what of the American Plan to Bring Democracy to the Middle East? Well, the war may be officially over, but don't lose heart, not yet... just have a look at this map, for this is what the "end" of a war looks like now:

via dailykos.com

Now welcome the weary broken American troops back home from their multiple long stints in Iraq (let's not think about their Iraqi counterparts); dust them off, patch them up, replenish their ranks, and let's get them back out there. There is much Democracy yet to be brought to many a thirsty, hungry, desperate (but rich in oil or other resources) corner of this world!

Enjoy the peace, my American friends...

 

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