2001-05-28 - 2:08 p.m. - mors1

It's Memorial Day, or at least the day when it's observed here. I don't know. I always feel terribly terribly guilty on these holidays, being a member of a generation that has never really been conscious of war. Gulf Storm was over by the time I was... five? So. Guilty that I don't live in a war-torn nation, haven't known sacrifice, don't live an a minefield... and incredibly grateful, too. I have a childhood. This is good.

And United States soil has not seen combat since- since 1941 and perhaps a little later when the Japanese Empire was at its greatest and Attu, Kiska, and Agattu were temporarily captured.

All these senseless deaths on one side. Not senseless, either: people thought they knew what causes they were dying for. They must be remembered... if a birch or a willow were planted for every wartime death, would not the earth be clad in white mourners and bowed weepers? Some days I get crazy, and I see trees stacked upon trees stacked upon trees, the East reverting to what it used to be, the forests of Europe springing up again.

All these boys on the other hand, playing with their little plastic soldiers, shouting shooting playing at with one another, laughing about bombs, nuclear weapons...

What for this laughter?

What for these jests?

Perhaps I'm overreacting. But I hurt. Something screams within me.

Remember for a moment with me. What has been lost can not be brought back again. So many deaths... such an absence of reason. May it never need to happen again.

J