The Burning of Darien

In the great Civil War movie, Glory, a young, white colonel named Robert Gould Shaw [Matthew Broderick] is given command of an entirely black regiment of soldiers, made up of freemen and runaway slaves. (This movie based on real history, but, please, history buffs: I know there are gaps and suppositions in the film. I'm talking more theme and message, here.)

Shaw

He wins their dedication through his own dedication to them, culminating with his refusal to take pay if the government does not pay the black soldiers the fair rate. They become a formidable regiment: excellent soldiers. Finally, they are given a job to do: foraging for supplies in a town called Darien, in the Union occupied South. They march down with another regiment -- a "contraband" regiment of black soldiers who are not well-trained and who are under command of a mad man, who is Shaw's superior, Col. George Montgomery.

When they reach the town, Montgomery begins, after having shot one of his own men for stealing from a white person's house, to drone about how he needs to wipe the town clean, like the hand of God sweeping through. He commands Shaw to have his men (who are standing neatly at attention, faces open and innocent while the "contraband" soldiers pillage and smash windows) to "fire the town."

Fairy's Tale (A Parable)

There was a mist, teeming with the sparkled flakes that were the Essence of Faerie, and it shone around them all and rippled away gently as they moved, those Creatures of Grace, whose voices rang multi-layered, like chords in a madrigal; whose eyes both reflected and were composed of the glimmer that spun everywhere. Mother and Father hovered by the roof-door and smiled down.

"Be good, small ones."

Zeema and Zoarenth smiled the smiles that contained all of the the pure and innocent evil of their kind, their faces aswirl with pink and white meldings.

"And, Chenthah: no scary stories," they said to the young Fairy who would watch the younger ones for the night.

"I promise," Chenthah said, the sign hidden behind her back, her face's colors shifting between blue and pink.

When the roof-door was closed and the glow of the glowbug lamps took up the toil that the moonlight had done when it had been opened, the children fell into Chenthah's lap and cuddled close. Their skin soon matched the leaves that roofed the house: deep green.

"Tell us the story, Chenthah," they said. "Tell us the stories of the Stoneworld!"

Chenthah, knowing full well that she would tell it, demurred -- her green eyes narrow and her skin going to the color of a luminescent Caribbean night-wave. "I promised..."

Stupid Smart People

It's easy to be happy if you are stupid. It's harder to be happy if you are smart. It's stupid to think that you need to be sad because you are smart.

Smartness can lead you to all sorts of things, but they don't have to be the prescribed ones. (The ones, I mean, that are written into conceptual law by the movies and the rock stars.)

Lately, it has been pretty much been treated as a given, by the intellectual set, that once you get smart you need to lose faith, lose hope and lose your sincerity. A policeman gets his badge and gun and uniform on that hard-sought day; a smart person gets smartness, recieves cynicism and loses faith, because he feels he must. A smart person leaves behind his smile, but puts on the robes of sullen superiority. He sees into the world and, so, sees its dark truth; therefore, he must be sad. To be happy is to be foolish; to be happy is to be a fool who grins in the face of tragedy, the smart person thinks. Anyone who is happy, the smart person asserts, is a fool, because the Earth is wrapped up in the twine of misery as the cork core of a baseball is wrapped up in twine of a more mundane ilk.

Kindness Desperation

Recently, some friends posted this video:

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It's an undeniably cool thing to watch. Cute as heck, for sure, especially because the big, tough secret service guys are handling ducklings. But some comments people made reminded me of how desperate we are for acts of kindness these days. A lot of people made reference to compassion and the beauty of simple acts. This is all true.

Dyeing to Live

I have graying hair, if you must know.  It started going gray when I was in my twenties.

Also, my mommy cuts my hair, still -- if you must know that. I think I get a get out of jail card with this, though: she is a licensed hairdresser and it is free.

Ponce thought he had it.

Anyway, once, when I was about thirty, she said, “Why don’t you let me dye your hair?” I said no. Then she asked me again. I said no. Then, I caved in. It was then that I began to live the life of the ever-looming lie.

I’m not what you would call a “metro-sexual.”  There’s not a lot of thought, in the course of my day, that goes into appearance. Sure, I try to wear clothes that match. I shower once a month whether I need it or not. (My dad’s joke.) I even shave pretty regularly. I refuse to cave in to the idea of dudes getting manicures and pedicures, much to my wife’s chagrin. (What’s wrong with my toes, anyway? [Don’t listen to her if she comments. She’s a horrible judge of toes. She wouldn't know a beautiful toe if it brought her tea.]) In short, I’m no slob, but I’m not exactly The Situation.