Evening news, Monday, March 9, 2009

Something utterly generic about the global economy is being reported as the main story right now. I won’t remember it tomorrow. But I will remember the banner of summary headlines running at the bottom of the screen: Robert Mugabe speaks out against violence at the funeral of Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife; 33 people killed in a bomb attack on reconciliation talks in Iraq; a suicide bomb targets a mosque in Sri Lanka; the militaries of China and US are in a public spat over whether one of them violated international law (either by encroaching on sovereign waters or by harassing a vessel in international waters).

It’s a common claim that the world is full of paradoxes. Philosophers and Zen masters and even quantum physicists have long told us that. Except this time, I’m really, really missing the poetry of it.