Grab and Keel

Many years ago, I received a call from my father and listened to the sound of calm terror in his voice, when he told me that he he had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.

Last month I heard that sound again.

This month has been a flurry of tests and appointments, planning and treatments to battle non small cell lung cancer.

Who knows the future? There is today and what is folded into life’s pattern.

One thing my analogic brain noted was that the Kenyan mall was reported on one news station as a Westfield Mall. In my experience, the Australian Westfield Corporation takes over other malls, rough shods contractors, aggressively nit picks pennies over larger long term savings, sucks what they can out of the malls and passes them on with superficial and minimal improvements. I imagine the corporate structure and  bottom line for them is similar in most locations, so I wonder how a tangential condition, like worldwide mall management similarities, plays into considerations of terrorism, anger and murder.

Life is not what is planned, grouped or imagined by one or a few. The outside or “other” always intrudes. What will this oligarch learn from this experience and how will it grow? Or should state/federal agencies have another look at mall security from an international perspective?

We pretend that life is linear, but it isn’t. We pretend that systems simplify our lives, but they only work until entropy takes them down. Even a view that is 360 degrees is only one dimensional. It’s hard to see wholly or even the layers upon layers, but our attachment to ALL is there.

Surely the mall was a victim just as those poor people were. However, I do have questions, like how did the terrorists manage to booby trap the building? Where did they decide to place the traps and why? If USAns were involved, what kind of familiarity might they have had with Westfield Malls generally?

What is to be done about the cancer of hatred and bigotry that allows one human to force another to recite the Koran or die? Surely International Westfield was chosen for a reason. They will either be a healthier surviving organ of that cancer’s treatment or they could be resected.

Cancer is never appropriate. It’s always rude, intrusive and mean. Deal with it.