Conscription, Compassion

Sometimes you have to open the knot to tie it tighter. Not a proverb, just something I thought up on the walk home from Peter's memorial. 

For some, the knot is support given to Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders. For others, Russia's inability to annex Ukraine.

The tighter knot is endured by those who support Ukraine but who take pity on the Russian kid who is being thrown into the back of a truck that will take him to a river where he will be changed into a uniform, given a gun and shot dead by Ukrainians. 

"War," my Mom said, "was simpler when we were kids. Back then you picked sides. Just one side." 

Compassion is nowhere near the burden it is today. Today we feel everything. Or we say we do. Lying only tightens the knot.

Yesterday Iran's leader cancelled his interview with CNN. Another country not invited to Queen Elizabeth II's funeral, Nicaragua, took CNN off the air. Lines are being drawn wherever and whenever they can be, and drawing on something is a kind of tightening.

Stepping outside the memorial, Peter's cousin John passed me a beautifully smouldering rosewood pipe filled with hash from the Kootenays. When I was a kid, the best hash came from Afghanistan. Until the Russians invaded it too.