05.29.02

Karash 1958: He was surprised by how much they to managed to glean from the books they had read, though until he pointed it out my mother had never thought of Kurash's history in terms of conquests, but that, she realized, is exactly what had happened: first the Persians, then Alexander the Great, then the Nebataeans, the Romans, the Byzantine, the southern Arabian tribes of Muhammad, followed by the Crusaders and then four hundred years of Turkish rule, followed, finally by the British -- for two thousand, five hindred years Kurash was ruled by someone else. "It never ends," Kumait said ruefully... "But surely that's over now... You're independent at last." "I don't think so..." My mother took him to mean that the United States was playing the age-old role... she took exception. "Having an interest in an area is hardly the same as conquering it." she reponded. [To which Kumait replied] "If I am convinced that more than anything in the world I want a television, a nice red car like this one, a fine drip-dry suit, bottles of Coca-Cola in my new Westinghouse refrigerator, and if, to attain those things, that image of myself, I give up, I turn away from, I abandon my own life, my own culture, then I have been conquered..." - From Little America by Henry Bromell [amazon.com] [And if we as Americans are convinced that this is the image of ourselves that we must attain then we have become slaves to the system that fosters that imperative, our individuality has been conquered, and our souls lost. - BRe]

05.04.02

"Every injustice committed against one individual is, in the end, experienced by humanity as a whole. - Peter Kropotkin, Prisons and Their Moral Influence on Prisoners. From [THE WATCH] by Dennis Danvers.

"But there are some moments - Wordsworth, I believe, calls them spots of time - wherein resides a great significance- sensed, if not always understood - whose recurrent and intertwining recollections shape one's life thereafter." From [THE WATCH] by Dennis Danvers.