The Gravity Of The Situation

Is something going on here, like Jupiter aligning with Mars? Are we going to look back on these recent days like our parents remember VJ Day in August 1945?

In this immediate gratification age, it just doesn't seem the same to me. Certainly, September 11, 2001 is bored into the brain stem & will remain solidly there permanently because of the uncertainty of the future on that day. I suppose the Cuban Missile Crisis was a similar event to the generation before mine. I was only five but do remember the fallout shelter drills, even in kindergarten. Don't think I could fit under that desk anymore.

But now? 777 down on the Dow yesterday. Not as horrid as the 22% drop in '87, but a major haircut nonetheless. Yesterday's vote for the bailout plan, the line in the sand, failed. So Thursday's anticipated vote is the 'new' line in the sand, the next crucial day in our history. Each passing crisis, if you're a chronic media watcher/semi-believer like myself, is inhaled, digested & excreted in spin form, tightly packaged in conservative FOX or liberal MSNBC wrapping. In this arena, there are multiple shades of the gray truth. And trying to absorb it ain't that fun either--it's been like being bludgeoned in the head repeatedly by a sack of oranges.

But maybe it's best we don't remember all this drama in the future. Maybe we're better off purposely forgetting all that stuff & simply noting the snapshots in time instead---the first sip of a great glass of an aged Cabernet, the roar at the dice table when you just rolled a third point in a row, the delicious tension of a winner-take-all baseball game, like the Minnesota/Chicago contest tonight.

'Cause in the end, that's all that really counts.

Later,

Jay