Drawing a rhumba line in the sand

I look awful, I mean it. This week: a thousand things to do, and read, and research and - whatever, upshot being this morning, I'm tired but I feel fierce.

Nana lit a fire under my butt a few weeks ago. Since then, I shut off the TV and spent every minute I could reading, mostly about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Audrey struck the match with the Nag Hammadi Library, which all made sense when Nana recommended the Perfect Heresy, a history of the Cathars.

On the other hand, the same week video surfaces of a stray American kid getting his head hacked off in Iraq I'm reading about crusaders burning heretics in truly terrifying numbers. The cruelty with which human beings treat one another shouldn't surprise me at my age, but it does. It really does. Yesterday I stared off into space awhile, trying to locate in myself not the murderous impulse - most of us have that - but whatever it is that makes one follow through on it. Break a beer bottle over a head, maybe; shove the broken bottle into the jugular, I don't think so. Probably not.

Song on the mental jukebox: Theme from "H.R. Puffenstuff."