BuzzFlash is linking to a song by Steve Conn called "How Does It Feel?" -- "How does it feel to know you're the one who started the fire that ended the world?" Conn asks George W. Bush. The question is repeated several times in the song (it's a very good song, not just a throw-away protest, and Conn is a talented singer). The question becomes more and more haunting as you listen. Has Bush started the fire that ends the world? It's possible. The more directly you look at what he's done and force yourself to contemplate likely reactions and consequences by the part of the world that is not George W. Bush or his cronies and friends, the more dread grows.

The song especially speaks to me because of a dream I had during the Kosovo crisis. I dreamed I was entering a church; the spirit of my deceased father was to my left in the wings, he had brought me there to see something important. I opened the door to the nave and saw pews filled with congregants and candles lining the aisles and altar. A white-robed minister was administering communion rites to congregants kneeling at the altar. From somewhere behind me, I hear a Dan Rather-like voice blandly say, "and now he will self-immolate." The alter bursts into flames around the minister. He begins to sweat, his eyes grow wide with fear, he stuffs communion wafers into his mouth so he won't scream. I do scream, throwing my arm over my eyes in horror, running from the room. The minister has led the congregation to this ceremony of self-sacrifice. But it is not until the flames begin licking at his own robes that he understands the fire will consume him, too, and feels the terror. And the guilt, perhaps?

If Bush has started the fire that ends the world, I wonder if he will ever feel guilt or fear about it. Conn sings that "some say you're evil, but I'd like to think you're just hungry for love." Maybe. But Bush is also a grown man with a soul to guide him just like all the rest of us. The idea that he might be doing so many horrific things as desperately misguided attempts to belong or be loved would only indicate a level of narcissism that would surely be the same thing as conscious evil.

Cary Grant

At age 80, Cary Grant said "I've become the person I wanted to be." His eyes were equal, warm, the soul showing through, filled with laughter. In younger pictures the eyes were unequal: one looked straight ahead, wide, the other looked own, closed. He pursued the person he wanted to be all those years. The thing is, I don't think at first he knew who that person was. Do most of us? It seems to me that becoming the person he wanted to be was the alpha and omega of his life. He wanted to be an actor and became one. He wanted to become a really good actor, and he did that too. But it wasn't until he made The Awful Truth that he stumbled on the person he wanted to be, a piece of him anyway. He discovered he could see the humor and absurdity when others around him were frozen in the usual way of seeing.

That seems to be a big part of the person I want to be, or all of us want to be. It's someone who is alive to what he or she really cares about no matter what anyone else wants or is doing, and expresses it, enjoys it.

I'm stumbling on pieces of who I want to be. Today when I was kind to a complete stranger and it took some effort--a postal clerk, made her laugh, instead of fretting about the time or waiting for her to be kind to me. Grant-like. some charm, some humor, some serenity in the midst of life's annoyances.