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February 26, 2003

Brought to tears

Headphones on, I'm going through my music library - the 4+ gigabytes of MP3 files that I have stored in iTunes. I'd acquired some new music on my laptop, and was generally synchronizing everything, weeding out old stuff, and ripping CDs from my collection that I wanted to have on my iPod. Jenni's due in 3 weeks, and we have about 6 hours of music that we want to have to help her relax and find her zone during the delivery.

As I was going through my music, I came across Right Here, Right Now, by Jesus Jones...

I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history

Back in 1991, this song hit me in the chest. It was an anthem - in the short few years preceding, we'd seen the eastern Europeans countries - the "satellite nations" of the Soviet Bloc - break away and declare their freedom. I was taking a polisci class while the Berlin Wall fell - my teacher threw away the textbook and taught from the daily news. The Soviet Union crumbled, seemed ready to return as hardliners attempted coup and shelled the parliment building with tanks, and was rescued by the court of world opinion - stuck in the old world, they'd shut down the TV and radio, but hadn't counted on the FAXes and emails and cellphones.

In what seemed like a matter of months, the Cold War - the leaden weight laid on our shoulders and the shoulders of our parents before us, and created in the era of their parents- was over.

The Gulf War just seemed like a brief abberation. For me, even with the horrible economy that cost Bush Sr the election, the early 90s seemed filled with promise and hope.

Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history

As the 90s progressed, we saw the rise of the Internet. The beginning of economic upswing that was the dot.com era, and the hallmark of the Clinton administration. Crime in the US dropped. Peace reigned across much of the globe. The world, while its problems were still many, seemed to be waking up from history.

Now, where are we? Seattle is one of the top 9 cities at risk for terrorist attack. Dubya is beating the drumbeat ever louder for war with Iraq. The budget surpluses of the turn of the millennium are now record deficits - state governments are going into debt unseen in 50 years, and the federal government is voting on raising the national debt limit. North Korea lobs missiles into the Sea of Japan. As Jon Stewart said recently, "Is it my imagination, or is every leader of every county in the world acting like a giant dick?"

My son will be born within the next month.

I heard that Jesus Jones song, remembered the hope and promise of a decade-and-change ago...

I was alive and I waited for this

...and, remembering what I was feeling a little over a decade ago, I nearly cried.

Posted by jim at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)