Fight Club

My mother doesn't appreciate the movie Fight Club. I think it has something to do with the brutal violence.

What she doesn't realize is that the main character (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) engage in brutal street fights (and basement fights, etc. etc. etc.) in order to experience life. Why does Edward Norton quit going to self-help meetings after they started Fight Club? Why did he go to them in the first place?

I went to church today. While we sang hymns, I found myself listening to a question that has been bouncing around in my head for several days now. "What are we doing?" (I've also been wondering what good a mass administration of frontal lobotomies would do if American voters refuse to make rational decisions anyway).

This past week, David finished up his first year of law school finals. Now he's an expert on the elaborate laws we've constructed to make ourselves good people... how has that worked out? I must think it's working well, because I'm going to join him. And Jacqueline waded through a swamp of homework. I don't know what Tommy is doing. I talked to him on the phone, but he never seems stressed. I'm sure Phil is perched beside his telephone (or email machine) waiting for me to tell him what colors I want in my hat. Alban is probably still floundering in the pleasure of being done with his senior recital; I would be.

I had two huge problems over the past week: 1) which video game to play, and 2) which articles to post on my Facebook page. 

Sometimes I think wading into a big vat of mud and splashing some on my face would be refreshing. Or gnawing some bark off a tree. Or starting a fight club and getting my teeth punched out until I was kneeling watching my blood drip into the pool of it on the cold concrete floor.

Sixteen thousand children starved to death yesterday, as they do every day. What are we doing?