text: There was something gloomy about them - the way those ice cubes sat on the bottom of the whiskey glass as they melted and diluted whatever was left of the Glen Moray. Coasting along the rim as the glass swayed in a circular motion, they seemed doomed to some stationary post - damned to resignation, or acceptance, of their eventual dissolution. In a way, it was a fitting depiction of the end of the good times. A decade of enjoyment, debauchery, and youthful carelessness came to its close - to be banished by one of deceit, inhumanity, and despair. In one fell swoop, the orchestras were hushed, the gilded gates closed, and the laughter exiled to some wistful longing. Not a word was to be spoken of them. Not an utterance of this time of extraordinary excess and comfort. For those who clung on to whatever stardust evaded the hands of time, it seemed almost a fairy tale. A refuge from the trepidation and angst of the decade before. A Shangri-la to drown out the beating drums and woeful cries. The men, who had just as quickly traded in their uniforms for evening suits. The women who had mourned, grieved, but found love anew. The children who had grown up knowing nothing but the splendor of those ten golden years. In their joyous rhapsody, how could they have known that this was all but a momentary reprieve? How could I have heard? How could I have seen? Muffled by the brass bands and veiled by the dying lights of smoke-filled rooms lay a world ripe for the misery that was yet to befall us. The bellowing of the desolate, the false promises of the charlatan, the naïveté of the hero, and the ignorance of the spectator. I turned away. We all turned away. And slowly, we lost everything. The abundance we enjoyed, the peace we took for granted, the belief that we would be free to relish in the pleasures of our fleeting youth. As I look back to the glass, filled now with nothing more than a dash of some pale bronze mixture, I cannot help but wonder what more could have been. Beyond those moments in the sun, we could never figure out what would come next - were these times meant to be for always? Or would there be something greater, still? More. Surely, more. In our best coats and gowns we flocked to some imaginary church - a congregation of the lost and indifferent, suspended from reality by some unearthly ecstasy. And there we worshipped those sacred hosts we ourselves placed on the high altar; every earthly desire that we, in our greed, ravenously devoured. As we consumed relentlessly without pause, we lost something of ourselves. As if the world, once seemingly reborn of an age of strife, instead capitulated to man’s most lamentable sins. Are you there, God? Yahweh? Allah? Lord of light and creation? Truth everlasting? Devil. Shaytan. Prince of darkness. Destroyer of worlds. Heralder of doom. Deliver us.