Memorial Day

I have a paper due tomorrow, analyzing my professor's single-most significant literary achievement. I've read -- or more accurately, waded -- through the "tome," but I just cannot get myself to sit down and commit my comments to paper. All that keeps running through my mind is, "Give me the damn diploma already!"

While reading the book, great ideas for short stories kept running through my head, and I found myself resenting having to spend my time reading a marginally interesting book, when I could be writing marginally interesting short works. I completed the second half of the book while spending time at my little coffee shop, sitting outside and enjoying the most perfect of perfect days. I know that if I'd had my laptop with me, or a pencil -- heck, chalk -- I'd have started putting a story together. As it was, I tried to continue reading while keeping details in my head. I've jotted a few notes, but what is clear is that my first major project will be a collection of short fiction. I have enough drafts and pieces that can be re-written that I should be able to assemble a coherent collection with at least a vague theme. I'm not really going to give myself a deadline, but I'm thinking it should be complete by Labor Day.

So, while I was reading and clinging to mental details for my story, I was also returning to my thoughts of Rosie O'Donnell. These thoughts, of course, lead to the war. And as I sat in my little sidewalk cafe, reading a nearly completely spurious book, I became very sad at the realization that on the other side of the planet there were young men and women who were dying, believing that their deaths allowed me to enjoy my perfect Sunday afternoon. Whether that is actually the case or not I cannot say. I can, however, ask the question, why do I deserve this? Do any of us?

And with this unprecedented ease, comfort, and privilege, what do we do? One of my favorite periods in history is the French Revolution. As a child, one of the first books I read cover to cover was a biography of Marie Antoinette. I remember being taken by the description of her little charades as a shepherdess and the little village she'd had built at Versailles. When I went to Paris, I took the train to Versailles just to see that village. It still stands, miniature two-story buildings that are hollow. There's nothing in them.

This is Memorial Day, a time when we remember and honor those who gave their lives -- Gave. Their. Lives. -- so that we could live ours. I find myself haunted by the question, can I do something worthy of such a sacrifice? Is enjoying a glass of ice tea on a Sunday afternoon enough?

The knee-jerk, nihilistic answer is no. But then I have to examine that answer, challenge it. What if that is enough? What if it is?