Mood:
sadTopic: "Takes a Worried Man"(4)
The thing that amazes Frodo most of all is that, as far as he now knows, he never met a single person who had died on the 11th Day of September, 2001. Despite his many trips into New York and Washington, and his many business contacts with people in the financial and military worlds, not one single casualty was an acquaintance of the Hobbit. It should be added that for some strange reason, Frodo feels ashamed.
How fitting, thinks Frodo, that his title this evening is Elvis Presley, singing about "Kentucky Rain." When Elvis died, Frodo left his youth behind, but it was the events of the 11th Day of September that suddenly brought Frodo into a confrontation with the final third of his own existence. He has found himself raging, as Dylan Thomas might have said, "against the light," as if he might, indeed, not go gently into that good night.
Now, more than ever, Frodo is concerned about principle. Reluctant to mask the truth for any reason, and unwilling to accept inequity, he finds himself increasingly torn by the fires of a generation soon to disappear forever. Hard work, and sacrifice, cannot erase the trivialities which characterize the final breaths of those who shaped and formed he who is the Hobbit. Frodo, every day it seems, laments the loss of civility in their lives, and promises, once again, that he shall not do the same.
How ironic it is that Frodo thinks about the 11th Day of September, and wishes that something so vile, so horrendous, could have been the vessel that served the end for those who now suffer, in heart and mind. It would have been quicker, and less brutal. It would have given Frodo something to cry about.
Crying is not all bad.
