The scenery is somewhat familiar to one's I remember years ago. White and green and tan tents thrown up and placed like a sand castle constructed by a toddler. Rigid, yet verging on failure in the wind. The gravel is flat in the high traffic areas, melted into the sand with the soles of boots, sandle's, feet and the heat. Concrete barriers, different sizes and shapes, but all the same. Walls not to be permanent, made so by time. Everything worn in together for a perfect fit.
It doesn't feel foreign, but I've spent a year with it before. To a new comer, and American, it's a foreign planet, an unknown way to live. It's grunge, it's dirty, it's desert life at it's most Roman style. Assimilation.
The lingo, you learn from day one changes. You're bathroom, a latrine, your mouth a cock-holster, your underwear, non-existant. Then, in an instant, you're not that shaved head pip squeak that wouldn't listen to mother, you're a boy in a man's world, the immaturity, the touch of immortality fits the warfighter you've become well, and in the waiting for it now, you think, Gyllenhaal narrated it so well, got it so right that you're astonished by the honesty that only Hollywood could bring you. To paraphrase; Clean rifle, masturbation, discuss religious differences, further masturbation.
This time for me is a little different, but it all feels the same. You're cocky because you're trained to be. You haven't fully let go of all of your childhood, couldn't happen to me innocence, even though you prepare yourself for the worse, you're still hoping and expecting the best. It's not just me anymore, there are men below me, charged to me. Their safety, their ability, there safety, there danger, their safety, their danger. I will imagine it's like most things with combat. You don't feel the change, don't see the change in yourself until you're home. Until you're free and away from it all. There's no PTSD while you're in country, and those who claim it, never have been outside the wire.
You talk through your experiences, hoping that the recollection you have of them will be enough to pass on at least one thing that could help the new guys, the fresh boys, the FNG's to key in on something that could save their lives. They play video games, and grab ass. Clean weapons and masturbate. Eat chow, sleep, workout, trade pictures of girls who sent them nude pictures. Their lives, in the near future, in an instant; will change. Their lives, my life, it's already changed. We're just to ignorant to realize it, to realize the depth of change that we have already made.
The mountains here, reminiscent of those in Palm Springs, or Vasquez Rocks, or a little of both. The snow caps still sitting, but obviously melting. The heat, not hot. They tower around in seemingly all directions. Starkly complex, and strangely beautiful and mystic. They're real places, and Mordor. It's not T-walls and metal containers. It's harsh and surreal. It's new. It's different. It's eerie and somewhat sinister.
... have a cigar, you're gonna go far...
No comments:
Post a Comment