Each of us is likely capable of living any number of possible lives. Against this background of un-lived multiplicities, the actual singular life that we do live seems rather impoverished.
Each of us is likely capable of writing any number of books in any number of possible styles.
Each of us is likely capable of thinking any number of possible thoughts with no regard for contradiction.
And yet what I most fear is the possibility of incoherence, the possibility that no one single life, or book, or prose style, or thought will ever accrete from this cloud of possibility. A life of zero events, of zero moments, and I cannot decide, even now, whether this would be a life in paradise, or a life in hell, or neither.
This August has been the deadliest month for American troops in the Afghan war since the war began 10 years ago. The wire services are not reporting the number of Afghan deaths in August. The inevitable conclusion of this war has already been broadcast, analyzed, and consigned to history, but the war goes on. Oddly, it is the antiwar candidate who has become trapped by the rhetoric of war. Death makes us less true, less politically brave, death due to error makes us somehow less careful of life, else we would have stopped the war machine and silenced the puppets long ago.
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