"It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards."

(Or, as it is often shortened to: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.") - Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855). From Journalen JJ:167 (1843)


So here I sit on a rainy (for once) Saturday morning, the cat's tail firmly planted on my keyboard as she sinks down low, only her ears and alert whiskers showing out the window to the two crows causing a ruckus outside. She tips her head up so she can see and doesn't move a muscle, barely breathing. This is Great White Hunter mode, and I see it fairly often due to the abundance of squirrels and birds of various sorts around here. What she thinks she'd do with these crows if she got them I don't know, and I don't want to know. Yesterday we had a squirrel on the deck, munching on one of my plants that I have a hard enough time keeping alive as it is, thank you very much. They both sleeked down into Hunter Mode, the one flat to the floor in front of the patio door, the other pasted to the back of the couch, only eyes moving, an occasional ear twitch. The squirrel just sat there calmly eating lunch, its front two paws shoving the stolen goods into its mouth, for whatever reason not realizing that there was a deadly predator less than 8 feet away. It got done and made to run across the deck, and that's when it finally noticed it was being stalked. Squirrel panic! It shot a couple of feet back and forth in indecision, then down the corner pole and away. The cats seemed disappointed. But there's always another creature to stalk. Perhaps next time they'll really kill the Big Bad Milk Jug Ring before it escapes. One never knows. It pays to be prepared, always.

29 folks in the hospital, 8 still missing and presumed dead. The NTSB figures the south end of the bridge shifted 81 feet but they're thinking that's not the cause of the problem. What that means, I don't know. Dubya spent time today crawling around on the wreckage, or doing whatever his Secret Service people and his spin doctors felt he should do. Unfortunate that more couldn't have been done before, instead of all this flurry after. But then, that's the way it always happens, isn't it?