Death of Osama Bin Laden

The news of Osama Bin Laden’s death leaves me cold. I had front-row seats as a spectator to 9/11 – I was living in DC, and walked past the Pentagon to get to a co-worker’s house that afternoon, and from my office window, I saw the smoke rising from the fire for the better part of a week, but I had no one to worry about, and was not in danger myself. For me, 9/11 is less of a personal tragedy than a turning point. As much as I grasp the tragedy of 9/11 for those who lost loved ones, my emotional reaction is more about what became of my country in the aftermath of 9/11.

In the months after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about “If [X happens] then the terrorists have won.” Huh.

If X = “the nation’s ‘terror alert’ never goes below ‘elevated’ for a decade and we generally let fear run our domestic and foreign policy; we undermine the civil liberties of American citizens and the human rights of non-citizens to the extent that we detain people for years without trial, and have a real debate about under what circumstances torture is okey-dokey; we lose the lives of more soldiers avenging 9/11 than were lost on 9/11; we treat good people with brown skin and headscarves with generalized suspicion and worse; we invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 on the pretext that the guy in charge did have something to do with it; we cripple our economy by fighting two wars so that we can’t even consider doing the right thing for the poor and middle class and elderly and the environment and the schools; we allow other dictators and bad guys around the world to pretty much do what they want because we’re overstretched militarily… and we enact all sorts of policies and experience so many cultural shifts that I can’t even perceive or enumerate them all…”

Then, OBL already won, even if he is fish food 10 years after the attacks.

Why Shibui and All That Jazz?

Shibui

In "Eat, Pray, Love," Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend in Rome who said that every person has a word. At first she couldn't come up with hers, but later on, in India, she came up with some sanskrit word I can't remember. Her word isn't the point. The point is, I've been trying to think of my word, and I'm surprised it took me a couple of months, because I've long had a special affinity with the word "shibui" (shi-BOO-ee). It's a Japanese word, which suits me. I love the onomatopoeic quality of the Japanese language, and I have a soft spot for the tatami-and-spare-flower-arrangement Japanese aesthetic. It's admittedly kind of pretentious to have a foreign word as "my" word, but pretension corresponds more or less, too.

I'm not sure if this is the definition a linguist would give, but here's how I'll define "shibui:" it's that tingly sensation that is the physical manifestation of feeling deeply touched by the wonder and amazement of it all. A frisson that makes you take a deep breath just to pull more of the outside inside yourself. Shibui describes both the sensation and the object that inspires the sensation.

When I'm at my best, at my most in-touch with myself and my world, this is the sensation I feel. And, at those moments, I vividly remember the first time I heard that word, and understood it instantly, from my friend Mie in Japan, when I was 17 years old: "Shibui, ne?"

And, All That Jazz

So, then there's this Joan Baez song, "Children and All That Jazz." It's a Day In The Life sort of song, all about the run-around of life with kids, so much fun, so many tears, and collapsing exhausted at the end of the day.

You get the picture. There's me at my best, inhaling and exuding wonder, and there's me the rest of the time, melting into a puddle at the end of a long day. I'm hoping this blog will help me pull those two "me's" together.