The Benefits of Distraction

Pain. It truly is a distraction. I can't have a sustained thought without wincing, especially if I move too quickly. I have no idea what I did, but for a full week now my lower back has been giving me grief. Every now and then I descend into the darkest of thoughts, it's not really a back ache, but something terribly wrong with my kidney, my colon, my descending aorta. I am going to die any minute, I swear something is about to rip apart and the face of an alien is going to burst from inside me. Pain.

So, I've been distracting myself with Suduko. Game after game. I don't want to read or think. I want to put numbers into squares and pretend that everything makes as much sense as that 1-9, over and over and over.

Still, the world outside of those squares seeps in. I hear there is going to be a debate tonight. Someone named Sarah Palin-- who doesn't know any other Supreme Court decision besides Roe v Wade, who believes global climate change is not man made, who knows that dinosaurs roamed our 6000 year old earth along side man, who knows more about oil and energy than any other American, whose foreign policy experience is limited to governing a state that has an island where Russia can be seen-- is going to debate some guy named Joe. You know, the one who talks a lot and says stupid things, but who really has actual practical experience. What does it matter? Doesn't confidence trump everything? And, that Palin girl is so nice and pretty.

My back hurts. Maybe it's not my back. Maybe I'm channeling the pain of a universe that's tired of our stupidity, our duplicity, our expediency. I'll just tag an extra $100 billion on this bailout bill and hope for the best. Stupid humans.

Didn't you think that we could be more than this? I did. I really did.