Last nights cruise into the world of Flickr was born of curiosity but turned into a sleepless night fairly quickly. All these goings on in the Middle East has me deeply worried. I'm torn if I should be taking sides (is this my fight?), reminded of my own mortality and painfully aware how much the world has changed since 9/11. Or perhaps the mayhem was always there and I chose to not see it? Before the fight was brought to us, it always seemed to be "somewhere else" and I watched the bloodshed on TV but from afar and with almost clinical detachment.

I am 42 and still remember the Cold War era, air raid sirens and bomb drills; I still remember the many jumping the Berlin Wall in their bid for freedom and being shot in their fruitless quest; I remember the Iran hostage crisis, genocide of Cambodia, Dawson's Field hijackings, murder of Marines in Mogadishu; and naturally, the mother of all - September 11, 2001.

But, last nights excursion into Flickr had me stumbling across raw pictures from the Israel-Lebanon conflict and here I am. It is barely 4 am, the rain is mercilessly pounding my roof and the image of the dead baby will not leave my mind's eye. Try as I might to erase it, it is forever burned into my memory and pictures such as these (that the popular media will not show) remind me how precious each day of life on this planet truly is. My son is spending the night at a friend's house tonight, blissfully ignorant of all the pain in the world as I was at his age - tomorrow I will hug him and tell him I love him.

Photo published by the Arabist, Flickr, July 21, 2006