Blessed Oblivion

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There is a TV program in which the presenter is Alan Alda of MASH fame. He is good at it. Much better than the uppity idiots who present other NOVA science programs. This particular program (that is shown on PBS ten times a week) is about memory and Alzheimer's. It's somewhat sad to see my own future in this way.

One story is featured about an old woman who used to play the piano in silent movies. She could still play all the old songs of her youth, but can't remember who the members of her family are. Not even her own children. If I live long enough that will surely happen to me. I hope it's my poetry that I remember so that, at least, I'll be entertaining at the same time my loss of memory of people's faces insults them. Ironically, I seem very pleased that my last days will insult somebody.

I went through a bunch of pictures that were separated out for me by my older sisters from my mother's last effects after she died in abject horror. Her death mask looked like that famous painting called The Scream. I never memorized the painter's name.

I separated out the pictures of my children with my second wife (her children, she informed me at our last encounter), to send them what was their's. I messily stuffed them into one of those USPO prepared envelopes and sent them to my oldest daughter of that marriage. Her address is the only one I have. I don't know where my daughter from my first marriage is or even if she's still alive.

One of the pictures that showed up in that packet was one of me when I was in my early teens. I have it on my desk beside my computer monitor. God, how beautiful I was then! The school photographer caught me looking/glaring/smirking at the camera in my own inimitable way. Daring the world to contradict me. I think about how this boy was the very one that guided my less-than-respectable life into the old man I am is today. He could not be tamed by man or beast. I like to think he never was. The child is the father of the man.

Of course, that's not true. Old age and death will tame me. The composition of my youthful face reminds me of Bradley Manning, the fellow who sent all those documents to Wikileaks. Young, smiling, not belligerently like my face in the picture I just described, but beautiful nevertheless, in his youth like me. He WAS a beautiful young man, and I'm glad that picture of him in his Army uniform was taken. I don't think for a second that he'll ever be beautiful again.

Yesterday I read an article on the internet where his lawyer stated that on his last visit to see him, the Army had kept him in his prison cell locked up naked for at least eight hours. Since Bush and Cheney openly admits that they ordered the prisoners at Guantanamo tortured, this not-so-innocent, no-longer-a-boy will be tortured to within an inch of his life. The only hope he has is that they will go over the line and accidentally kill him.

I had hope Obama would reinstitute the principles of the American people when he took office, and bring Bush and Cheney's misdeeds to justice, but he told his appointees to ignore their admissions of torture. More's the pity for the American people. He said he would close Guantanamo, but the military/industrial complex is more powerful than the administration or the congress or the American citizenry, and it won't ever happen.

Eventually, in my less than prudent opinion, the entire island of Cuba will be like Guantanamo. A false paradise with a culture of torture that will make the gulags and stalags pale by comparison. That will show that stupid idealist Castro what it's like to oppose the power of "the home of the brave and the land of the free". .

It's amusing in a way for the Tunisians and the Egyptians to think they have achieved anything at all in their fight for freedom. They foolishly trust the Egyptian Army to guide them to better government and the freedoms they only suppose exist in America.

Their precious Army was trained almost exclusively in the United States by the very generals who ignore the administration and congress as if they were their bitches. The United States has more of it's citizens locked up in cages than any other country in the entire world. That's freedom?

I absolutely hate that I noticed that Obama struts around the stage in the same manner the Italian dictator Mussolini did in the old World War Two propaganda films. I really had not rather know what is coming. I'd prefer to exist in a state of personal shock and awe than to be so certain.

It probably won't matter before long though. Soon enow, I won't remember my kinfolk when they talk down to me as if a child. Hope is the only product any human has for sell. I hope for some blessed oblivion such that I won't taste death. '-)

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