I cried 3 times just now watching Obama honor Biden
and then Biden deflect the honor back to Obama. No one
could ever convince me their love for each other, their families
and their country is an act, is anything less than genuine.
Obama and Biden. I remember when Obama first chose Biden
I thought, Obama and Biden rhymes with Osama Bin Laden,
how strange is that? It's not a simple rhyme either, but a complex
multi-syllabic slant rhyme. It seemed beyond random; six
syllables, it would be pretty difficult to come up with one
better than that. It's practically inspired. What could it mean?
Was it a sign pointing to the fact that meaning doesn't reside in
names? Or did it indicate the very nearness of meaning
between the two, the way a change in only a few consonants
between one set of names and another could, for instance,
be the difference between the good guys and the bad?
Though of course I'm trained not to believe in good and bad.
That's something you learn if you read enough books,
that there is no bad without good, black without white,
everything's grey, it's all relative, each side thinks they're right,
etc. After all, Osama Bin Laden was a man who loved his family,
his people, his God, as much as Barack and Joe do. Maybe
that's what this oddly uncanny rhyme was trying to tell me?
I mean it's a private lesson, really, because most people won't
believe it means anything at all, and whether it does or doesn't
really doesn't matter in the end. What matters is I took the bait
fate put in front of me in the form of a poem, rhymed a villain
with my heroes and thereby stepped into someone else's skin.
Who was Bin Laden? Why did he do what he did, would I have
done the same if I shared his name? If I lived where he lived?
It's such a complicated rhyme isn't it? I love Obama and Biden
but don't know how to feel about the murder of Osama Bin Laden.
No comments:
Post a Comment