(Russian ground forces redeploy near Iran’s Northern Border.)

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, said the Chinese wise man.

Today I can feel the results of those first few tentative movements toward a distant horizon. Interest flickered as I read of the Russian troop build-up on their border with Azerbaijan. A flicker, as for the first time in days I thought about what the implications might be for something larger than where the phones might have been left impossibly far away in the vastness of the little apartment.

Unreachable as the stars.

It is different this morning, and I feel buoyed. Not that it is good, but it is good to be thinking again. The radio has been a soothing babble the last week, since the drugs and surgery addled me. The bizarre campaign rhetoric is impenetrable, and the mixed economic numbers are adding to the desperation of those who have been in charge of this mess for the last four years.

I don’t envy their position. This is a tough nut to crack. I was looking up, deep in the night, half-awake.  I realized something had changed on the journey. I could have slept again, I realized, and recalled with amazement that I had maintained consciousness after dinner for a few precious hours.

This morning I ticked off the metrics by which one judges progress from the surgeon’s knife. One is pain, the pure and simple interface with existence and the lack of it. Stepping (and I can only say that metaphorically) backward from the pain itself- and it is still there, of course- is coming a distinct sense of well-being.

I must have been feeling it last night, I thought, but there was a major issue of whether all on-board body systems were functioning.

Sight, hearing and taste have been abundantly present. Motion is still restricted, of course, but trial and error efforts since the return to Big Pink have outlined the dimensions of the cage in which I am confined, and each day brings efficiencies of motion and routine- muscle memory in wheelchair and crutches.

The last direct link to the operating theater was whether the digestive system still worked. That is a topic of major interest to professional staff: “Have you….?”

“Urinated like a big dog,” I said. “Sorry about the other thing.”

The proximate flicker of interest was not caused by that, per se, but perhaps enabled by it. The wild card of events overseas. Syria and the continuing massacres of women and children along with the occasional adult male are stark in their horror. This is way beyond anything that happened in Libya, and yet…

And yet.

The Syrians- or at least their government- have powerful friends in the Kremlin and in Beijing. The prospect of major conflict with either is anathema to an Administration already under severe pressure- and so the killing goes on.

What does it mean? What are the portents for the summer?

I am expecting the Israelis to act against the Iranian machine at some point. They have shown all the indications-and-warnings in the restructuring of their government to assume a war footing. Something is going to happen. The Russians expect it, too, and re re-deploying forces along the border with Azerbaijan and muttering about the consequences of what might happen if there is intervention in either place by anyone.

I had not thought about the consequences of war with Russia, inaugurated by independent actors, and with direct repercussions to our national interest.

Like I said, it caused a flicker of interest. The nice thing about that- from a very minor personal perspective is that it must mean that I am starting to heal.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com