Thanks to a reader, another by Wislawa Szymborska: (and wonderfully translated):

Any Case

It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened earlier. Later.

Closer. Farther away.

It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.

You survived because you were last.

Because alone. Because the others.

Because on the left. Because on the right.

Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.

Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.

Luckily there were no trees.

Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,

A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.

Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.

What would have happened if a hand, a leg,

One step, a hair away;

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?

The net’s mesh was tight, but you; through the mesh?

I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.

Listen,

How quickly your heart is beating in me.

(translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik & Sharon Olds)

“The arts aren’t just events to be gone ahead with or cancelled after a tragedy. One of the powers of great art is to try to make sense of difficult things. Toronto Globe & Mail critics look at the power of artforms – Dance, Music, Visual art, Literature, Theatre – to help people cope with tragedy.”

And The Boston Globe “asked people who create beauty to reflect on how work like theirs responds to the horrors of Tuesday”: those queried included John Harbison, Bill T. Jones, Oscar Hijuelos, James Taylor, sculptor Dimitri Hadzi, Sonic Youth member Kim Gordon, novelist Robert Parker, political humorist Kate Clinton, playwright Charles L. Mee, poet Robert Pinsky, musician/writer Jennifer Trynin, composer Deborah Henson-Conant, musical director Craig Smith, and Robert Brustein:

This is a time when art is most important because it complicates our thinking and prevents us from falling into melodramatic actions such as those we’re about to take. But this is the time when art is made tongue-tied by authority and when it’s a very small voice among hawkish screams. … The greatest thing that art can do in a time of crisis is to make us aware, not to turn us into our enemies.

Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg: When Words Fail: The Stilted Language of Tragedy: “In the wake of the attacks, though, official America needed something else: language that would reassert control of a world that had gotten terrifyingly out of hand. A high Victorian indignation serves that purpose well. It evokes the moral certainties of a simpler age, when the line between civilization and barbarism was clearly drawn, and powerful nations brooked neither insult nor injury from lesser breeds without the law. This may be the first war of the 21st century, as President Bush has said. But its rhetoric will be taken from the 19th.” LA Times

Add one more to the reasons I think it’s an ill wind blowing when Ira Glass’ name is mentioned. Named radio talk show host of the year by Time, he was, like, Howard Stern should’ve gotten the honor instead. He’s either being serious, and contemptible, or sarcastic, and ridiculous.

A Word On Statistics

“Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help, if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.

Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four – well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy: eighteen.

Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.

Cruel when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know, not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand: three.

Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.

Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred – a figure that has never varied yet.”

–Wislawa Szymborska (1996 Nobel Laureate in Literature)

Here’s a Google search that will inform about conscientious objector status with regard to the US Selective Service and the military draft.

‘International terrorism has occurred with frightening regularity in recent decades. Over the years, a number of Atlantic contributors have considered why this is so and what can or should be done about it:

‘In “Thinking About Terrorism” (June 1986), Conor Cruise O’Brien argued that leaders in the United States and elsewhere fundamentally missunderstand why people turn to terrorism — and how to dissuade them from it. O’Brien went on to suggest that our current methods of combatting terrorism not only are bound to fail, but might even encourage attacks.

“Today’s world — especially the free, or capitalist, world — provides highly favorable conditions for terrorist recruitment and activity. The numbers of the frustrated are constantly on the increase, and so is their awareness of the life-style of the better-off and the vulnerability of the better-off….. A wide variety of people feel starved for attention, and one surefire way of attracting instantaneous worldwide attention through television is to slaughter a considerable number of human beings, in a spectacular fashion, in the name of a cause.”

‘Mark Edington’s “Taking the Offensive” (June 1992) argued that the United States and other countries should take a far more active role in stamping out terrorism. Excessive caution on the part of government leaders, he suggested, has prevented our military from taking measures to destroy known centers of terrorist training and weapons stockpiling:

“Whereas target countries must succeed every time in protecting themselves, terrorists have to succeed in their objectives only sporadically…. The defensive strategy toward terrorism has, in essence, made us sitting ducks.” ‘

[I’ve already mentioned, below, Mary Ann Weaver’s “Blowback” (May 1996) and “The Counterterrorist Myth” (July/August 2001) by Reuel Marc Gerecht (“An officer who tries to go native, pretending to be a true-believing radical Muslim searching for brothers in the cause, will make a fool of himself quickly.”)]

It is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the opening of the holiest ten days of the year, dedicated to individual accounting and atonement — or, as I prefer to think of it, reconciliation. By tradition, we think of renewal and the rebirth of the world at the new year. It is a terrible and frightening new world in which we awaken as the year turns over, but, I pray, also a hopeful one. An Israeli friend told me that the fondest Rosh hashana wish of many there this year is, “May you have a boring year!” To all who choose to observe at this time: a happy new year…

Arafat orders Palestinian ceasefire — ‘The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said he has ordered Palestinians to abide by a ceasefire with Israel.

In a message to the Israeli people that coincided with the Jewish New Year, he stated: “I have given strict orders for a total ceasefire and I hope the Israeli Government will respond to this call for peace and will decide to cease firing.” ‘ BBC

FBI warns of surge in hacking — “The FBI has warned of an increase in hacking attacks following last week’s suicide hijacking events in the US.

The cyber attacks were likely to be carried out by “self-described patriot hackers, targeted at those perceived to be responsible for the terrorist attacks”, said the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC).” BBC

Crowd in Ill. demonstrates at mosque as backlash continues against Arab-Americans, Muslims Police turned back 300 marchers — some waving American flags and shouting “USA! USA!” — as they tried to march on a mosque in this Chicago suburb late Wednesday…

“I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have,” said (one jingoistic demonstrator). SFGate

Should Americans disturbed by this consider seeking out your local mosque and asking them if you can come and worship with them in solidarity?

Bush is Walking Into a Trap: “In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America’s need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated.” –Robert Fisk, Independent UK [via Common Dreams] And: Washington’s Call for War Plays Into Terrorist Hands: “A maddened U.S. response that hurts still others is what they want: It will fuel the hatred that already fires the self-righteousness about their criminal acts against the innocent.

What the United States needs is cold reconsideration of how it has arrived at this pass. It needs, even more, to foresee disasters that may lie in the future.” –William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune [via Common Dreams]

” On Tuesday morning, a piece was torn out of our world. A patch of blue sky that should not have been there opened up in the New York skyline.” Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth, has continued long after it has become unfashionable to stare unflinchingly at the prospects for the use of weapons of mass destruction. “Among the small number who have been concerned with nuclear arms in recent years, it has been commonly said that the world would not return its attention to this danger until a nuclear weapon was again set off somewhere in the world. Then, the tiny club said to itself, the world would reawaken to its danger.” Like myself, he has found that Tuesday’s events bore much similarity in detail if not in scope to the recurrent nightmare of nuclear destruction dreamed by those who worry about it. Will it awaken us? Los Angeles Times [via Common Dreams] [I found it courageous, and nonetheless abit too brutalizing for right now, for him to suggest that, as bad as Tuesday’s loss of ‘two buildings’ and the accompanying lives were, we consider the possibility of losing ‘all of Manhattan’.]

I.S.P.’s Curb Terrorist Postings and an Anti-Islamic Backlash New York Times