Something i should have never written (sorry!)

At a bar tonight talking to the local Alexandria regulars, I was confronted with my past. A girl that I would have laid down in front of traffic for, a woman I would have given up anything for to make her life right, smiled and waved me over. I went knowing that there was no good to be gained from this exchange, and hoped that our conversation would stay in the past, no matter how much I wanted to hear her lash out for the singular event that destroyed my only true friends love for me. Though I broke down and gave in some, I at least never apologized. It was her birthday and her ex continued to buy us drinks even as he realized that he had long out lived his usefulness in the conversation. His final departure marked the beginning of her drunken tirade against my person. Though I too feel that I have plenty to be mad about with her, I feel nothing. No serious emotional response at all was really available, if I had been able to respond I think if it was four years ago I would have felt something like this….

I could never tell you that I was furious with you. That you abandoned me when I needed you most. That I was at the point in my life for the second time where I would either be alone and start all over, or that the friends that I had would come and take me away. Yes, it sounds fairytale and ideological but damn it I had sacrificed so much for those friends. I had given up so much for their benefit and I was in need. Not only was I in need then but within a year I would be deployed and the first time in my life I would need my friends, and I had none except those I took with me. I was alone as I thought I had always been. That I had put so much into relationships that in the end proved to be fruitless, a reinforcement of my own self doubts, brought to life by the actions of the very people that said they loved me. Fuck them, fuck them then and fuck them all the way to now. Somewhere between there and here, the mask that I wore became real and they no longer mattered to me. How dare they presume that they know what was in my mind, how dare they presume with out asking how I felt. Well at the time fuck them, they say they feel sorry for me; I don’t want their pity. They hope that I have changed, well knowing the choice I made at the time; I know that I haven’t and am proud of it. As I sat down to write how I felt, thinking that I had so much emotion pent up and could write for hours on the exchange, it turns out that as I have trained myself to be, it meant nothing. I have felt almost nothing in the process of the night. I don’t even hope or wish for her. Then with a smile I think maybe I have become what she must have thought I was then.

It is funny, I have never apologized for that week of my life that caused my two best friends to stop talking to me. One for somewhat justifiable reasons, the other for no reason at all. It is a shame that I group them together, but they are not. They are completely different. One, was incredibly angry at my misinterpretation of the situation and my unwillingness to sacrifice for her on some small scale. It is funny that the small stuff will kill you. I would have given up my life for her, yet the three hours it would have taken to get her where she wanted to go and back, I couldn’t do. Obligations are funny that way, that when the small stuff cant out weigh the other stuff you will sacrifice. Yet had it not been that small, had it been a crunch or something more significant, I would have done anything. The other being so much more complicated but I will say that I have never been disloyal. I have never betrayed. And if she did not do that, then well I am completely wrong but that is how it felt. A girl that I loved and loved and loved hit just the right button. Its funny as well that most buttons can be ignored or argued about, but he combination of buttons that she choose, knocked me out. And that was it, I had been left alone again surrounded by what should have been my best friends. So, tonight I had the opportunity to say how furious I was with one of them and I couldn’t. She had been drinking and was again telling me how I should live and be so that I could grow and all of the abstract things that would make me a better person, when she looked at me and said, you know you have never apologized. My response was calm and soft, no, I have never apologized. Her response was what are you looking for from me, and in the same voice I responded, nothing, nothing at all. With a smile I tried to tell her happy birthday but it was lost as she came to grips with what she must have seen in my eyes.

I Wish I was There

The world spins around me as I continue to move through my life. I have woke again in self sadness that comes from the emotional high of victory. Only to find that it was a dream, that the victories were not mine at all. As the day grows cold and dark I know that I am walking in my footsteps again. That I am no longer pushing the world around but are instead moving in place. I dream the horrid dreams of war, and wish with every part of being that I was still there. For the news from the front is not what it should be, it is not filled with laughter and jokes of my friends. No, now I find it filled with sadness. I trained a platoon of forty men to be efficient and strong, and they were. The army took them away from me and sent them into harms way. And before they even loaded onto a plane and I lost a man. To call him a man might be an exaggeration at 17. Now they are in the midst of the toughest fight of their life, they have lost five to enemy fire, and have had over ten of them wounded. This time my platoon will return scar’d and changed for life, as I sit here and read about it. My dreams are tough, I have slain dragons and sieged castles, I have fought and stormed across Flanders fields, and I have wrestled Iraqis to the ground, only to wake and find that the life I have now pales in comparison to the sacrifice of those whom no longer dream of such heroics but rather live them. You ask me where I want to be today, I have only one answer “I want to be next to Verdeja, Boyd, Pulford, Watson, Salazar, and all the others that I have fought beside before, that is where I want to be.” I only hope is that one day I will be able to lie next to them forever and know that from then on I will always be with them.

Rest In Peace my friends

Arrogance

Lost in thought and study, I have found it hard to take pen to paper and scratch out some thoughts. The mysteries of life spread out before me to guess at the right and wrong, endless debates on the world as it exists, or for my not so cleaver friends, or does not exist. These ideas that I have pushed to paper for my new degree have left me with a notion that is so arrogant that only an American could have come up with it. The idea is that it might be our obligation in the world when asked to help, to help with the idea that the American way is the most efficient, and prosperous. That we know best, was the hall mark of the Marshall Plan and the New Deal, both to be considered successful reconstruction efforts. That the American values are good for all is not a new idea. In fact tried and tested in the cold war, winning us the final victory in the end. Well that motto became ashes on our tongues as we realized how arrogant we must have been, how un sophisticated we were. “Democracy and free markets are not for everyone… we shouldn’t force it upon them, might does not make right….” Well, those in the world that have preached this for the last twenty years have won, I will get in trouble for even thinking that we can teach Americanism, or re-educate another society, or reprogram a region of the world. What does that mean, that I cant even bring it up as a topic, even though it is the only strategy that has proven successful. The irony is that when another group of people need help it is usually their own practices and issues that have sunk them to the point of desperation. And, then they ask for help in the form of gifts and money, and say that you Americans are the only ones that can help us please show us how. Yet when we try to show them how, they say it is not our way, just please make the check out to so and so and we will be fine. Our response should be, because you have done such a good job so far with your own resources, so I am going to give you mine so that you may make an even bigger mess. Well screw that, maybe what we need is some mean spirited idealist, the revolutionary like Washington and his band of friends that terrorized and propagandized the rest of the colonies into war.

Irony vs. Karma

Today I woke to find that my favorite comedian had killed himself, Irony. The man responsible for the continual reminder of the direct relevance of the most common events, placing them into a useable perspective, the quintessential guide to understanding our own misunderstanding and the importance of little things the bother us the most. This man found that his own life was too hard and too much, too something to live and shot himself. Irony, the man responsible for keeping me from such a dramatic end decided that suck starting a pistol was the ultimate joke. Karma, would have been if he had shot me.

This particular incident had a much greater impact that originally thought. It forced me to evaluate two very different definitions that affect all of our lives. Even if you don’t buy into Karma, then change the word to fate, or god’s justice, whatever ill will you receive for actions of your past will work for me. Irony: the girl you want to date and marry is the girl that you best friend or dad just slept with. Karma that girl is your daughter. Irony: an Irish man getting crushed by a monstrous luck of the Irish sign. Karma, the sign lands on you. Clearly such a dramatic difference that I have found; that Irony is when the negative action happens near you, providing you with some insight into a glaring contradiction in life, where as Karma, you are the contradiction in life, and the negative action happens directly too you. Well as most are, I am racking up both negative and positive karma daily, though most days lately it would seem negative will win out in the end, leaving me to imagine how will it come back to me. With a little more uncertainty I travel each day evaluating and preparing for when I will get mine. I try to smile at least at one more person a day, say one more nice thing, help one more old lady across the street because what is my Irony is clearly someone else’s Karma. And I don’t need my new boat to sink to the bottom of the Chesapeake anytime soon.

Dreams

The deep blue water rises up and out of the ocean reaching for the sky in white foam only to be smashed back to earth by one of the few constants in the world, gravity. This rolling thunder crashes through the barrier and into the shore in a deafening roar. The sandy beaches smooth and soft from the pounding, poke-a-doted with footprints, some two by two, others in some random dance of the playful. Broad-leafed trees pushed back from the water leaning towards the ocean and sky as if bowing in acknowledgement of their weakness in the face of such awesome power. It is no wonder that when your mind sprints from where it is at, in hopes of redemption, most people find it on some beach in a tropical paradise. Those that work and suffer at the hands of others, the feeling of no control, the constant response to the whims of others or the necessities of life, long for the imaginary freedom that must exist in some base tropic existence. The fallacy is plain to see if you are willing to look, but most aren't.

So I too have trapped myself into the belief that the carefree existence is freedom; from the past and future, from needs and wants, and from loneliness. The irony is that the dream comes in single servings. So in response to a childhood dream of adventure still yet to be tamed I have set out in the first phase of some great sailing voyage yet to be. I have pushed a Sabre 28 through the shallow surf of the Chesapeake bay, starting to learn the skills necessary for bigger and grander adventure. With hope and patience I set out on the bay with the fall of the night clouds, and all the light of a moon and stars, I will my future on the sky and the winds.

The currents pull me in every direction; with limited patience it is amazing I have had any success at all. The great adventures to be had, the stories to be written, the academics to be studied, and the painting to be created all lie gathering dust on the shelves as my life stretches onward in a not so healthy mix of procrastination and military service. It is amazing to think that all men before they are soldiers dream of the battlefield, the comradeship, and hardships that will give them the title of Soldier. Yet; the irony is complete that from day one of basic to the cold nights on the Falluja peninsula we lie awake at night dreaming of all the other things in life we would rather be doing. In those cold nights, wiping the dust from our eyes and equipment, in whispers we talk about buying sailboats and cruising across oceans, or climbing mountains with a few friends.

These stories are the real dreams so fragile that they can only be told in whispers while lying still. They are as different for each soldier as possible and are all accepted, these are the stories told after the loud posturing and machismo subsides. The older among us talk about family and make futures for their children that are explained in detail. A younger man will talk of his new bride at home in infinite detail that would make him a poet if he was able. Some, the true loners with no solid grasp of the world describe the mountain range that they will conquer, where as I chose the sea to be my great glory. Maybe that is what it is, the attempt to find some glory in the dream of our youth, as we realize that war will not bring the glory that we had anticipated forcing us to find something else. Or maybe that reality of the situation requires such an escape that we create battles that are less real and more serene. In the end I do not know, but what I fail to understand as of yet, is the overwhelming feeling of not having accomplished anything, though I have meet more and more of my goals, I still feel as if the time is slipping away and I have almost nothing to show for it. I am not alone in these feeling, more and more professional soldiers with experience feel this way as well, that heir trade is so far removed from normalcy that they have nothing to show for their time.

Others around us try and remind us that it is just not so, that our stories are their favorite to hear, that they are envious of us, yet it is a hard fact to believe. How many times have I wished to have had the travels and successes of my friends? How many times have they looked back at me as if I had insulted their existence by wanting to shed mine to assume theirs. Their faces only remind me that as much as I have felt inadequate I would not change the life I have lived, the places I have been, or the people that I have known.

Boat Buying

What do I say to a world that has meant me no harm, or has it? The question still remains, what do I say? My own being cast before your judgment, and laid bare before your standards of perfection. Who are you? Whom do I refer when I say you? For some days it has been my own judgment and self-evaluation that has hurt the worst and then I remember my values are based off of You. What am I to do, thank god that I fall with in the acceptable norms that define the reality of life within the United States. So far from the mean of the world we live in a self-destructive paradise that makes us soft. Well I have taken the first step, I have done what I have demanded of myself for years and have bought a boat. Maybe now I can prepare for what is the eventuality that I have shared with anyone that would listen. I will go out to sea; I will let the ocean breath fresh life into my tired body and hope into my soul. Then in the not to distant future I will give myself to the ocean and let her claim me as her prize.

St. Elmo's

The small coffee shop sits on the corner of two small streets in an out of the way neighborhood called Del Ray, in Alexandria, Virginia. This coffee bar holds your usual collection of college students, elderly, and the outdoors-eco-kids that seem to always be displaced from Colorado. The constant sound of keys dancing on a laptop, the conversation’s politically loaded and rising in intensity, fill the air with the ambiance that you drive ten minutes out of the way for. Occasionally looking up you watch this twenty something woman-slash-girl, clearly marked as an American in her soft skin and gentle face of a life lived in the relative comfort of the States. She is setting up a small stand and mike, her guitar rests in the corner. The room waits in some anticipation for what must be another aspiring artist low paying Sunday gig. Oh, how wrong we were to place such insignificance in her. Pages turn in my book with the slight wisps and another paragraph of notes flow from my pen before the music starts. I am not even sure when it started but glancing up I saw her, eyes closed hunched over an instrument that was nearly as big as she was, power flowing from the rhythmic movements of her arm, chased by the softness of a voice that seemed to call out to the crowd for recognition. I look back down and continue through another page or two, and notice that some of the sounds that I had traveled for have stopped. Keyboards are silent; the conversations one at a time have stopped. My eyes again return to the woman, the softness of her voice echoed with the fierceness of the guitar she sings a story. The room is a washed in the rhythm that she he is making with the force of her very being. The past disappears, as years of conditioning and memories created by trauma and repetition are lost as we find ourselves entrapped in the cleansing of our very souls. For that is what the absent of a past or future feels like, the instant erasing of all possibilities leaving you there in that moment free to feel and explore the very sounds that are now echoing through the audience. We cannot move, we cannot think, we are just in jubilee. Her eyes open and the spell is broken, the music slows and stops, reality sets back in, she is human. She pushes back up her long sleeve t-shirt and runs her hand threw her short dark hair, the gentle slapping of her flip-flop on the stool even stops, she smiles and thanks the crowd.

The room returns to normal and the keyboards start to tap, and the conversations start up again, slowly with some hesitation. Everyone in the room knows that they were mistaken in their judgment of this women, though none have yet to realize the full impact of what just happened, it would come hours later, for most, when they were quietly preparing for bed and searching for the peace of mind that helps with sleep, when they will recognize the pure tranquility they had found for those few precious moments in the coffee shop in Del Ray that evening. No one had the chance to properly thank her.

I should not post this

I have found that the demons that I once thought conquered are still there waiting for me to slip. The same dark nights that used to haunt my nights are finally returning to haunt my days. Where has the resolve, the strength, the steadfastness that was my very trademark gone. Where will the life choices take me.

Haha almost eight months to the day I wrote a passage about a girl. Well I think it is about time to write another. This one is so different from anything I have tried before, and I am not sure what to do. I am just not sure. And it hurts to know that she might be absolutely sure and it is me that is screwing with her. The peace of the mountain air descends from the slopes down to my very balcony, breathing deep. Where will it go. So the girl, well for the first time in my life I am calm while I am around the girl, but the price I pay is domesticity, I am now staying in and running out of things to do as she does not share with me the same desires for drugs, sex, and rock and roll, a horribly missed used quote but the only way to describe her complete lack of a desire for a night life at all. (I write this knowing how shallow it sounds, but it is just the outward display of some inherent difference, the difference being some level of content that i am incapable of sharing.) Leaving me with the sense of missing out, of an incompleteness, yet at the same time when I am around her I do not desire any of those things that in the past would have had me moving so fast. I desire to go back to war, I desire to have an impact on the world or at least to have greater control and power than what I have now. I must harness all the energies that I have to continue down those paths, and how do you ask another to join you on paths that are and must be completely yours alone.

What scares me the most is that I will miss an opportunity for happiness and completeness because of my very fears. Because of all the training and conditioning that I have set in place just to survive will not allow me to feel the nessesary emotions that it will take to keep her. I am not quite certain which way it will end up but in the end I will be forced to make the decition and act it out in a manner that will be weak and childish to the nth degree.

Eulogy for Polo

I thought it would be different now; I thought it wouldn’t hurt as much. Half way around the globe men and women are pursuing our nations national interests, and implementing policy with a rifle. They are tired, worn, and most would rather be here; yet with a consistency that should make you cry, they will never leave, or quite. They are tough in ways that most will never truly understand.

Many psychologists would agree that distance and time can fix most things, as well as lessen the impact of almost any event. Last night, this abstract idea that I had held as fact, came crashing down around me. On a rooftop that overlooked most of downtown DC, two blocks from the Verizon center. I was having beers and bullshiting with the low-end political aids that scurry around the real administrators in the Old Executive Office Building, though most would just say they work at the White House. The irony was absolutely complete when my phone rang during a heated conversation of how much it would cost to build more F-22 or fund a new infantry battalion. How is anyone supposed to be prepared when the real cost is measured and paid.

My roommate called and my phone started up the annoying Gnarls Barkley song. Answering, I immediately started to tell him what the plan was for the next couple hours. When I was done speaking there was an awkward pause, nothing more, followed by “Polo is dead,” two breaths, “he was killed by an IED.”

The world stopped moving, people stopped talking, all actions and senses ceased. No more words were exchanged on the phone, just silence. The phone was still open and on when I stood up and walked away from the party on the rooftop. No one looked at me, no one noticed. The shock wears off much quicker than you want. In fact, I found myself trying to hold onto the void that shock can create; knowing that this is so much better than what comes next. My pace picks up as I move faster and faster across the roof and down a hallway of wooden fences towards a door. I do not know why I am headed this way but I need to leave. The anger builds with the pace and I am not sure why pain and anger come together but I do know that both demand that every part of my body feel the same pain in proportion to the rest. So I strike out at the wall, punching and punching. I kick in a portion of the wooden fence and slam the beer bottle that was still in my hands to the ground. Now I can feel the pain in my hand, the throb of the forming bruise, the emotional fury subsides and I regain composure now that I can feel the physical pain. As if the physical can and should overshadow the emotional screams that rushed through me.

I returned to the party, only partially aware at the stairs of confusion as I reached for ice to sooth my hand. My friend asked “what happened to your hand?” and in the only way I know how to deal with the absurdity of the situation, “It picked a fight that it couldn’t win with a brick wall, stupid eh?” As I wrapped the ice around my hand I went and found another beer, and rejoined the group, forcing myself into some pattern of normalcy before I could break away and be alone, as I wanted.

Polo, there can be no lasting tribute for you. A man, a child, a friend, an atheist Chaplin of the highest order. How do I write of a man that knew more about life than I do. How do I say some words that he would have accepted as just and honest, how do I make reconciliation with a man who was my better. There are no words, nor diction that can tell you of this boy-man. Life is meant to be tasted and enjoyed the invigoration of the living, this will be Polo’s testament, he truly drank from the well of life, where I, and most are but merely spectators of this cosmic play. The verse he added was much too short. The streets of paradise are lined with his friends, whom all remember the smile and charity of Polo.

May you rest in peace, we are coming, please wait for us, we will be along shortly, my friend.

The Class Room

Yesterday I sat in class and watched my hand start to shake… it has been almost a year since the last time I displayed any visible signs...

Had Dr. Hanle known that I might have issues with the class, he probably would have warned me of the content. Yet as strange as it was, I listened to the start of the class discussion and I could see where we were going, yet it was still the same as a surprise on my system when the nature of killing was being discussed in a room of people that had never done it.

“Men like to kill, violence is gratifying and empowering, murderers intoxicated by their deeds…”

Slides go by on the wall, a PowerPoint gallery of children and terrorists. The depiction of change that would bring a pee-wee soccer kid into the ranks of suicide bombers. Others in the class raise their hands and through out comments that I do not hear. The discussion is not wrong, it is merely academic, and the Doctors points are sound psychology. All I can do is hide my hand under my desk so that others wont notice, or more accurately so that I don’t have to notice. I do not have issues with what I have done. I have put to rest any of my concerns and regrets about situations that have occurred in my life. And the class moves on.

“As men draw… near it becomes extremely difficult to deny their humanity. Looking into a man’s face, seeing his eyes and his fear, eliminate denial. At this range the interpersonal nature of the killing has shifted. Instead of shooting at a uniform and killing a generalized enemy, now the killer must shoot at a person and kill a specific individual. Most simply cannot or will not do it.”

The visions and the memories come back to me. Oh the irony of the last sentence on this slide. The look of disgust on a Marine officers face when she hears the statistics of soldiers willing to fire their weapons at an enemy. Then the failure to understand the very nature of the training that has managed to raise those statistics from WWII levels of less than half to today at near 90%. The Air Force logisticians scoffing comments when he asks why wont they kill an enemy that they know is trying to kill you. I have never wanted to raise my voice more in my life and ask, had they ever looked into the eyes of a dying man… if the answer is no then sit down.

“With very few exceptions, everyone associated with killing in combat reaps a bitter harvest of guilt.”

Now this slide brings many more questions than I would have thought possible. My hand is shaking in the perfect understanding of what this slide means, and others are questioning the validity of the very statement. Anger rises to the surface and the only noticeable sign of my displeasure is that my hand has stopped shaking completely. Anger to calm the nerves, followed by some notes hastily scribbled on the handouts. Notes about my reaction to the statements on each slide, within minutes blacked out with marker, for fear that some other might read them and judge me.

I guess it is the judgment of others that keeps us quiet. Or is it the judgment that we have already passed on ourselves. You know that the actions that you have done in your life are wrong. And that their acceptability is based on circumstances alone. Years of second-guessing and reworking an incident until you can put it to rest. The real fear is that someone else might have a different assessment than the one you have chosen to live with.