i'm sitting in the great room of andrews hall by accident, alone in this huge echoing room with the spirits of thousands of americans. i'm slowly walking around the room, forcing myself to make eye contact with each and every one of them. it's been so long since i've thought of this as involving real people, so long since i've allowed myself to feel the emotion behind it. i had become numb to it - it's history, it's overseas, it's over. but forced to put a face to it again - a whole roomful of innocent, broken faces - i can't help but break down. so i'm sitting here again, crying for these people i cannot save, writing this as if it means something. as if my words could do justice to my feelings, as if my feelings could do justice to their agony. they can't.

if you're on campus, check out the 9/11 photo exhibit in andrews and take a moment to reflect, to regain some perspective on all of this. it is amazing the things you can forget and ignore in order to continue in your daily existence. but what about the people who cannot continue with the life they once had? a moment's reflection for those, both living and dead.

i want to sit here for hours and try to sort it all out, but could i ever, given any amount of time? could enough time ever pass that i will be able to somehow comprehend the blood on their faces, the tears, the wreckage, anger, despair, the children in their fathers' firefighter helmets, the people searching desperately, hopelessly for loved ones? more than that, could enough time bring me to understand the courage this instilled in so many, or the hope? i know nothing - i know a modicum of raw emotion and that is all. everything else i have to say is bullshit. this definitely pulls everything i said with such conviction last night back into perspective.

i'm taking one last turn about this room. i need to remember the humanity, i need to keep myself humble.

last night brought another one of those cathartic conversations that have become the life energy i require to keep going. it started after lani and i got back from the coalition for social change meeting. while i sympathize politically with most of their views - they are anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-consumerism, pro-environment, pro-human rights - i think they are trying to combat everything they hate with the same methods they supposedly abhor - namely, hyper-militarism. they have great ideas and i think it's awesome they are enough to act, but i see it going to dangerous extremes. and worst of all, they think it's funny. the violence and attack propaganda may just be a joke, but i'm sure they'd be the first to insist that it's when you start making light of something so serious that it goes astray and eventually out of control. and maybe that's the only real way to get your point across - maybe such a small grassroots group has to be somewhat militant just to catch someone's attention. but i see some hypocrisy there - which i am obviously not innocent enough to legitimately say, but there it is anyway.

this led to six hours of real conversation between lani, josh and i about what we deemed the issues. i don't want to corner my friends into some kind of ironclad ideology, but i think first and foremost it is very interesting how we break down on sides of each topic. as i told her last night, i think lani is an enigma. she is far more liberal than i in some respects - she likes the idea of communism in principle, she is far more of a pacifist than i am - and yet she considers herself a republican. she is a true independent if i ever saw one, which i admire, although i must admit i have a feeling she will eventually come to think of herself more as a democrat. we haven't discussed enough political issues to really judge, but she seems socially and fiscally liberal; the only issue i can name that she is truly conservative on is abortion, though she may certainly correct me on that bold and presumptuous statement. she is an idealist in the purest sense of the word, which pretty much defines her whole thought process. josh, on the other hand, is the uber-realist. he is a proud american, he has far fewer qualms about war, and he is unquestionably conservative-leaning. he sees things as they are; he has an incredible grasp of human nature. that being the case, he and lani agree on almost nothing.

i think i'm somewhere in between the two; though i am very strong and fixed in my opinions, they fluctuate between realist and idealist, liberal and.. ok, well, truthfully just liberal to ultra-liberal. ;) yes, i am an unapologetically liberal democrat. i see the worst in my country but i still think of myself as a patriot; i think we are capable of achieving the best ideals i believe in. i'm with lani on pacifism; i'm with josh on human nature. josh and i have the atheist mindset in common while lani and i are naive idealists. lani is a christian, josh is an existentialist, i am a humanist. someone needs to study us now, we are such fascinating people. at least we like to think so - hence the ability to talk for six hours straight on the most serious, important issues in our lives, stopping only for the fact that, shit, we have class in less than five hours.

so to get into just a few of the things we talked about... to me, communism doesn't even sound nice in the abstract. it goes against the basic human instinct to succeed and be better than anyone else and so could probably never work in a community larger than twenty people. as a liberal, i do believe everyone's condition ought to be raised to a reasonable standard of stability and comfort - through government intervention, absolutely. but beyond that, i want to have the chance to be the best. without that to strive for, what is life? capitalism, even our brand of extremely diluted capitalism, is not perfect. i would simply argue that it is the best system we have invented so far. it comes the closest to fostering individuality and fairness simultaneously. what could improve it? well, i'd say a complete takeover of government by enlightened liberals, but then i'm a little biased.

the war in iraq is the one topic we're so plarized on that it's barely worth it to discuss it. lani and i are so staunchly against it that i can't imagine any argument that would shake us out of our morally righteous frame of mind. saddam hussein has nothing to do with what started our latest crusade; we just have this perception that we have a god-given right to take our military superiority into any country we choose and oust any leader we're not really happy with today. that's a demented power trip i cannot even begin to justify. we would kill tens of thousands of people in iraq - innocent civilian lives - for what? to prove that we can? to scare everyone else into submission? to reclaim our collective penis? what gives us the right to police the world? this is the reason why non-western civilization despises us and it is a dangerous tack to continue. the only point josh makes that i can't answer is this: if not this way, then how? obviously i want to see an end to the atrocities committed against the people in middle eastern countries, i think there should be a regime change. i don't think killing mass numbers of people and recreating them in our own image is right, but what instead? there's this paradox i don't know how to work out yet: since we have the power to don't we have an obligation to help, or does that constitute an abuse where we have no right to interfere?

it was at about that point in the conversation where josh saw a mouse scurry along the wall and out the door. which caused lani and i - strong, liberated females that we are - to begin shrieking like the sterotypical 50's housewife. all the reason we had a claim to throughout this discussion went right out the window. distraught as we were, we calculated that it was only quarter to midnight, definitely early enough to make a trip to the 24-hour wal-mart for mousetraps.

that taken care of, we again determined that it was well within reason to get some grub from wendy's and sit outside the restaurant for another couple hours, long after closing, and contine our conversation. the issues took on a more personal tone, covering everything from our disgust with the majority of our peers to our thoughts about death and human nature to our greatest fears. right there - take a snapshot of three close, open-minded friends at all hours of a weeknight, sitting in an empty parking lot, discussing things that matter - that is what i live for. that is what a liberal arts education should be. that is the pinnacle of human existence, if you ask me. love is great, but could it ever equal what we have as friends? there's only one thing you can get from love that you can't (read shouldn't) otherwise and that is children. and i don't have a very strong drive to have kids - as amazing as that is, i'm not sure it's for me. so i don't think it gets any better than what i have right now. in any event, i'm not looking or hoping for more. i'm good.

six hours boiled down to this - i am leaving out 95% of it, partly because i don't have the time to elaborate, mostly because i could never recreate what happened between us last night. thoug we're burdened with an overabundance of questioning and self-doubt, i truly believe we've got the better end of the bargain over those who go through life without considering it, from one simple pleasure to the next, one beer to the next fuck. i know i begin to sound like an intolerable elitist - so much for all my big talk about regaining some humility - but i can't imagine preferring any other life. i am full of bullshit, but the difference between people like me and my friends and then the majority of the rest is that we're trying to do something to change that. and we will, one catharsis, one moment of reflection at a time.

as a ps - my recent exaltations on my friendship with josh and lani is by no means intended to exclude my other friends, it's just that circumstances have given us a lot more time to spend quality time together. we talked about this last night, too - cheryl, i feel so bad about your bitch of a schedule, and i really wish you could have been there last night instead of battling with physics. i do miss you - i miss the whole group dynamic of last year. though i've gained this amazing thing lately with josh and lani, at the same time it feels like i'm missing out on something with cheryl and shawn. hopefully we'll find some time for group antics and whatnot - until then, i guess we just kind of muddle through all that work nonsense we're paying for.

love you guys.