and then our exile

it is in the little stories that the jagged edges draw blood. we call them little stories because we are subsumed in numbers, it is one life, or two lives, or more, but how can you compare these to millions of lives as numbers we bring up. only now emerging.

a village flattened, three children the only survivors. what lives will these children live, now?

there are hundreds of orphans in hospitals spread across northern pakistan. for international prostitution rings, this a windfall direct from the tree of hesperides; they take them direct from their hospital beds.

in haiti, then. listen to interview on haiti in part two.

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i have bought numerous used books recently, with money which could have bought tents for people who do not have shelter nor food.
: i do not believe in negative responsibility, but collective guilt must arise from somewhere. it is obvious that by operating within a certain society, adopting a certain lifestyle, there is a certain degree of general culpability given the individual. wealth is not individual, it is collective - i did relatively little to get this money, yet i regard it as my 'own'. it is mine not because i 'own' it or i 'worked' for it - it would not be mine even if i /had/ 'worked' for it, simply because the notion of possession is fallacial.
these used books were quite cheap, and now i have a huge reading list.
but people still do not have shelter nor food.
this is why i try not to think of personal responsibility so much, because it is awe-inducing, frightening.
but sometimes i can't not think about it.

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i stayed up till monday morning working on an essay i'd pushed till the last few hours. enjoyment, because i was able to use vocabulary from christian mythology i somehow am very familiar with but rarely use. skipped first class, but the rosy light of sunrise as i drove in an hour later than usual more than compensated, falling across frosted hayfields and lines of trees. ran to campus from the MCE, arrived with reddened knuckles and a face blotchy from lack of sleep.

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these two amused me:

"Lord - grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Augustine of Hippo.

"we should make a bumper sticker. 'what would kant do.' no one would get it."
- Dave Kahane, of Phil101.