Went to see Nicholas Ray's "Bitter Victory," last night at the Siskel Center. A young Richard Burton plays an officer in the British Army, World War II, the desert of Libya. Strange, unsettling. Echoes of the desert futility of today.

The film seems to be telling us: war makes cowards of us all; those who kill and those who don't. No heroes, no villians, just humans projecting their prejudices, their fears upon the world. To live, to kill, to die, is human.

Strange forebodings. To be in the world, but not of the world. How to embrace the world with compassion and at the same time find calm detachment?

Change is the ocean we swim in, the ocean that never changes.