Saturday morning, gleaming sunlight upon pure fallen show, and at Starbucks I wrestle with words again.  Each day presents a new contestation to say what is sayable.

Before turning in last night I noted that on television an interview conducted with a female Ukrainian diplomat.  By all appearances it was a measured, sober, responsible Q&A about the fate of her country.  I chose not to listen.  A troubled mood and sleep never mix.

Often a scene has a flavor of fate, a recursive pattern, like a tape playing endlessly on a loop.  The pattern is familiar, but how can I be sure that a particular end is already given?  It would seem guaranteed, — Putin’s commanders have used only a fraction of the forces poised on the Ukrainian border.  How can the cities possibly hold out?  And yet.

Meanwhile life “goes on” in the rest of the world’s cities, and here at Starbucks too.  I read these words in the morning’s issue of the New York Times:

As Gen Xers and many millennials approach or move through middle age, the entertainment industry has become determined to soothe their passage with a ceaseless and sentimental remembrance of things past: “Sex and the City,” “Gossip Girl” “Jackass,” “The Matrix” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” have all taken another turn around the piazza in the past year. “Frasier,” “Night Court” and “Beavis and Butt-Head” are rumored to be returning. Even “Law & Order” is back.

…Nostalgia is easily packaged and sold because it promises to create a community out of a cohort.

…The internet is an endlessly renewing nostalgia mine from which anyone can, at any time, extract a cultural gemstone — a music video from the early days of MTV, a jingle for a product long out of circulation — and post it for all to appreciate.

—New York Times, Remembering When by Melissa Kirsch

Perhaps you are wondering about the photograph?  The image was taken subsequent to the fighting in Kharkiv on Friday.  Does it matter whether the dead soldier is Russian or Ukrainian?  He will not be returning home to a mother, to a wife and children.

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We always need a life-line.  Here is a song, The Grand Illusion written by Dennis De Young, that captures my sense of our lives together.

The Grand Illusion

By Styx

Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star.

But don’t be fooled by the radio
The TV or the magazines
They show you photographs of how your life should be
But they’re just someone else’s fantasy
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because you never win the game
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…

So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because your neighbors got it made
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…

America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are

Composed by Dennis De Young