We live under the shadow of the Holocaust, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the killing fields of Cambodia — but the world does not seem particularly restrained by the memory of these events. Let’s not forget, here on the cusp of the twenty-first century, that new calendars are still made from trees; that the same old ax delivers the blow.
America’s promises in the passionate night. America, how I loved you.
Sadness doesn’t want me to deny its complexity and stubbornness, take away its mystery. Sadness doesn’t want to wait while I drink a double latte — skim milk, please (I may be sad, but I don’t want to be fat) — and convince myself I shouldn’t feel sad. No, sadness wants me to put down the newspaper and cry — right now — for those too tired, too desperate to cry for themselves; for everyone who’s lonely and everyone who thinks he’s defeated loneliness; for all the dead in all the wars still to be fought.
