Had brunch with an old friend on Saturday. We left the restaurant and walked across the street to the bookstore. On the corner, six people with big signs: Beep for Peace. End the War. World Peace.

My companion said aloud as we drew near, "Beep, beep." and one of the protestors smiled broadly at us. I wanted to spit on them. I said nothing, did nothing.

I say nothing about politics lately. How can one be against, "peace"? One time I was with my husband in a grocery store parking lot and a guy walked up to us and asked us to sign a petition for legislation to help end school violence. We declined because the petition was actually out of our voting jurisdiction, but we didn't explain why. The guy said, "aren't you against school violence?" My husband jokingly said, "no, I'm all for it, the more the better," causing the guy to step away from us like we were diseased.

Of course I'm for peace. I'd love nothing better than an end to world suffering. If I let myself, my mind plays over and over for me planes crashing into towers, sobbing as a tower 100 stories high collapses into rubble. I re-live the emotion of not-knowing. Not-knowing how many. Knowing it was too many.

At night, I feel the pain of two nations, one country in mourning that their "innocence has ended," as if America could ever had innocence to be lost. Another, war-torn for decades, under new threat. I think about being a woman in Afghanistan. I wonder if what her day would be like, if she hears bombs at night.

I can hardly listen to the news. I know I should listen. I should listen as a citizen, a watch-dog to make sure our government isn't using this act of violence against us to push economic agendas. I hear snippets from people, "they are carpet bombing cities, hospitals, there is no possibility that this war will ever end." Conspiracy theories. I feel helpless to do anything but go on with my life, live each day the best I can.

I feel like a child. When I was young, sometimes I would watch a news story and form an opinion about a world issue. I would present the newly formed idea to my parents. Normally, I was "wrong", and they quickly explained how wrong I was. My dad was military, party-line republican.

I don't know what I am when it comes to politics. Lately, my mind closes down to even beginning to wrap my mind around world issues. Logical thought impossible, I'm just left with emotions that race through my system, hard to hold still long enough to examine. Anger, sadness, confusion. Patriotic sentiment. Disgust that I am one of the faceless masses that can be categorized under the statistic, "decline to state opinion". I don't know what my opinion is.

I long for an enemy with borders and its own flag. An enemy that bullets could really kill rather than this enemy that spills our blood and scatters into holes, like cockroaches when a light is turned on. Kill one and there are a thousand more.

But I walked next to my companion into the bookstore and we talked about my husband, her boyfriend, our latest writing projects. I wonder if it matters that I form and state an opinion, or it is better to leave that to others and just live the best I can.

  ¶ 10:43 AM