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After the Strike on Caracas: A Veteran’s Perspective on Consequence

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

The United States has hit Caracas some hours ago. It’s all over the news which, of course, is never truly informative after the first 24 hours and sometimes as long as 72 hours. I simply saw it as inevitable, and far enough away that it shouldn’t blow my windows in.

I looked out at the moon last night before I slept and thought, “That moon would be a great operations moon.” This morning, over a cup of coffee as I sat outside, I found out through international media channels. I sit about 384 miles away from there. That’s not very far away at all if you’ve lived on a continent and drove on it.

The local press will of course be teaming with reports on it largely echoed by the international media I keep track of. The local populace has been quite vocal for or against. It’s been coming for a while, and it didn’t surprise me.

So far, I’m right.

I’m sure people died. I’m sure there was collateral damage, hopefully at least minimized. I’m sure that there will be speculation about wild speculation as the locally uninformed go on wildly tangential narratives. Roll the die.

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Starting 2026.

Sunshine
~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

There’s plenty that could be waxed poetic about.
The global situation.
The near-local tension between Venezuela and the United States.
The AI slop coating the internet.
RAM shortages because billionaires are having digital wet dreams.

I rolled my eyes while writing that.

The world is already a landfill of the garbage we produce, and civilization inherits it—directly or indirectly.

Instead, I’ll just give a small update on my life, for those interested.

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Moonshadow

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine passed away a while ago, having been battling a resurgence of cancer I was unaware of, and it impacted me because he and I had been corresponding about the value of Life, questions of mortality. He didn’t speak a word about his situation. He spoke a lot about mine.

Maybe it was a distraction for him. We weren’t close; a few times on a trip I had made, but we had become close in our own way. Sharing thoughts on mortality is a different sort of intimacy, but when people speak honestly – as we did – it is an intimacy. It’s subject is taboo. We’re all supposed to do anything to stay alive according to whoever started that tradition.

He did. He had a lot to live for and it showed in his battles with his health – a giant of a man physically and mentally and emotionally. All the while, we spoke about mortality, life, and a few other interests.

I need to get back to writing, but playing back those conversations in my head, rethought with his own situation as it must have happened, adds a depth to what he was saying that I didn’t understand then.

So I’m doing that, because the best thing you can do for a noteworthy person is revisit things that you shared with a new understanding of their perspective.