Author: BostonJoe

Have they no shame?  At long last, have they no shame?  Another Republican candidate for...

I live in my own world half the time.  I can be insular.  Provincial.  I try to...

I am a rational man.  I believe in science.  And in my present phase of life, I am almost an atheist.  Anti-spiritual.  There is only the world.  And my thoughts about it.  And I’m comfortable with that.

But I wasn’t always this way.  I was raised a Christian.  With all the charming myths of that faith.  My brain was reared in a world with a Devil.  Angels.  Spirits.  Life after death.  Good.  And Evil.  And all that believing in the supernatural in church on Sunday, meant also that the folk tales of ghosties and ghoulies and monsters and the like.  They were all possible.

And in the trap doors of my mind, those spaces where I have not exorcised all things irrational, these concepts lurk.  Who among us hasn’t lived a full-life and encountered something difficult to explain in rational terms.  A miracle.  An unexplained phenomenon.  A chill in the night.

Holy Shit!  This guy is my new attorney hero.  He is super.  It seems to me like he has done a thorough investigation designed to get at the truth.  He took the facts.  Applied the law.  Made the call.  And he is serious as hell about the law of procedure (grand jury secrecy) and total fairness (I’ve indicted, I’m prepared to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, but we will have a trial).  Fucking great prosecutor.

And apolitical, or at least able to keep his politics out of it.  I don’t know if it will go any farther.  Maybe we will never get Rove or Cheney.  Maybe this prosecution won’t challenge the case for war (he told us all here at Booman — don’t look to me for vindication, you will be disappointed — because he is looking at facts and law and doesn’t give a crap about anything else, unless whatever else turns to be facts and law implicating the case for war).

As a former athlete, from days of a life lived so long ago I hardly recognize them as my own past, I remember mornings like this one.  I can best describe the feeling as “coming up for air.” Days following grueling competition.  Where your body aches with pain and exhaustion.  But your spirit, in victory or defeat, is filled with pride and accomplishment.  You breathe and heal and smile.  And you ready yourself to do it all again.

I have spent the last few weeks on a committee, planning for our local anti-war group’s response to the announcement that 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died for a lie – as an organizer for one protest, and the leader of a separate vigil.  I haven’t crawled into bed earlier than 1:30 a.m. in these weeks, and I’ve been up before 6:30 a.m. everyday.  Slogging along the anti-war trail.  Organizing.  And doing the life things that we all do – for me, promoting a novel, writing, some legal work, waiting on Fitz, and taking care of a family.  So I’m beaten down a bit.  Tired. Drained.  But left with that feeling.  That I’ve done something special.  That feeling of coming up for air.

If you want the details of the bumps and bruises and smiles and hugs, join me after the break.  Because sharing them with you is one of the best parts of the whole process for me.