Another Sad Day

I've been following the story in Boston since thirty minutes after it began. If you live in the area, I hope you're all right. I hope all your loved ones are all right. It's horrible enough an eight year old kid was killed because someone with a bomb had whittled his worldview down to handling his issues like this. It's a sad story begetting sad stories. And it's infuriating.

I continued following the story from the dentist's chair during my appointment to-day. On the way home, I listened to the soundtracks to The Hidden Fortress and Sanjuro, the sequel to Yojimbo. I thought about a quote from Akira Kurosawa that's long stayed in my mind about Yojimbo, about how he often wanted to stop senseless battles "but we're all more or less weak--I've never been able to. And that is why the hero of this picture is different from us. He is able to stand squarely in the middle and stop the fight." I've always thought this had a lot to do with the movie Kurosawa made immediately previous to Yojimbo, the bleak portrait of inevitably bad ends, The Bad Sleep Well. Because there's little proactive one can do about something like what happened in Boston. The only solutions are long term, better mental healthcare, wiser guidance of the youth not just in education but in art, and culture and in general; to prevent minds from settling into plain, loud, black and white conceptions of reality.

Twitter Sonnet #497

Himalayan gummy bells bring amber
Breezes, woven with a gaseous god's meat.
Ornamented goats ghoulishly canter;
Artificial snow sears with oil heat.
Cocoanut liquorice slime seeps in strips,
Bare bad and irrevocable olives.
The great burning Ice Warrior now sips
Whole glass tables broken by all octaves.
Curving toothpicks indicate a blank cat.
Notches tally graceless, noble rock stars.
Blameless crackpots operate on flesh hat.
Suitcases of squid fit in single rars.
Blushing northern lights fade behind grey snow.
Dimming video waves in a white glow.