Where Were You?

Where were you when the news came?

You might have been among the half million shipped out to Armageddon, in which case it was no news to you.

Or perhaps like the rest of us you got caught looking. Maybe it reached you on the air, down from the satellite, pulsing through the cable, all those male faces taut with excitement, with concern, with the rush of the big story. Did it catch you at your evening meal, a blast from decades past?

How did it make you feel — scared, depressed, elated, unreal? When History unfolded around you, did you see it as a poison flower (fucked, like the man say, down to its eternal root), or did it seem to you a fantastic firework, some gorgeous portent of the skies?