Muffled Footsteps

"As we stabbed the dummies with our bayonets, one of our commanders stood on a podium and shouted from a microphone: "Kill! Killl! Kill the sand niggers." We, too, were made to shout out "Kill the sand niggers!" as we stabbed the heads, then the hearts, and then slashed the throats of our imaginary victims."
Joshua Key, The Deserter's Tale.

In the quietness of these times; when we were no longer at the centre; the city enveloped us like garbage; hardened faces on the street making their way to work. Just another face; eyes that are pinpricks into a greater consciousness; all this was just our daily life and dying despair.

Have to fly to Griffith today. Another airport sequence; another hire car; another job. Beetle into the country. There wasn't any backlog; any defining moments; we were just sent here to record the zeitgeist; and we didn't do that very well.

I dream of being in the country; and continue to slave on in a city of corrupt dreams. Passing houses full of old stories; and feeling the grip with the physical world lessen even further. We are barely held in place.


THE BIGGER STORY

WASHINGTON — President Bush is expected to say in a national address from the Oval Office Thursday that the troop surge he ordered in January has helped protect the Iraqi people from vicious attacks and is tamping down the worst of the sectarian violence seeking to tear the country apart.

Bush also is expected to endorse a plan outlined earlier this week by his top military commander in Iraq. The plan would bring home about 2,000 troops by the end of this year, and about 30,000 troops by mid-July 2008.