Heading into a Fourth Point of Contact

The stories being recollected from another time, an era I was too young too know about in this place I call a job, seem to scratch like a vinyl unattended on a turn table. It's the same old song and dance, but with a little more of the dance I think now. I question, how long has this place been in disrepair? and whether or not it can be fixed. I'm sure I'm not the first one to think that it surely needs to, that it must to survive. But like a sickly being, it's learned, adapted to what it is and may never be able to go back, or go forward for that matter. It stops itself from changing, and keeps itself from staying the same. Probably no different than any other large organization.

I dive in the dirt and scramble carefully close to the ground. Weight shifts easily in the wet cold sand, and I make hand gestures that most American's wouldn't understand, but the few behind me do. I point my laser to and fro and listen to the symphony of heavy metal chamber it's explosion after explosion. This is the place to be, nothing better than this at the moment. I watch the fireworks fizzle through the air in the green hue through my night optics. It's as beautiful as any Rembrandt, and awe striking in it's destruction. Beauty in the eye of the beholder, but every beholder would certainly be in awe. I control it, and though it's only my third or fourth time doing so, I pull my experience together and use past examples to help make the right decisions. Lethality is a word I would never associate with beauty, but this symphony of death is a painted picture of perfection that would make Charles see and Beethoven hear.

It can't get any better in this moment. It's such an easy thing in the moment, but in the every other aspect of this job, we are failing. This won't last forever, and the struggle within has to recognize it's purpose. War is sometimes a necessary evil, but one that I hope we don't have to necessarily use. Only ignorant people who haven't gotten out of this bubble of a world globalization pushing America thinks that there could be no war. The best Army is a prepared one, prepare to go to the lengths necessary to destroy the evils that threaten our very way of life. We can't continue to allow public influence to make decisions in our military, because the 1% of people willing to die for this country, to go that distance and do the unthinkable do exactly that. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, the undesirables that are necessary to kill.

I see the uproar of a video, that we're supposed to be better than our enemies- and we are, but the judgement placed upon these men who have probably no doubt lost a friend or buddy, fellow American to an unseen explosive device that they could then only pick up pieces of him to send home to his family- the get ostracized for urinating on men responsible for that. Those Marine's, who are constantly getting in trouble for being a little less than what our society says is normal, should be getting praise. Praise for doing a job that so many of the rest of this America is not willing to do. How dare you have an opinion on the matter when you can't even cast a stone, let alone live in your glass house. You wouldn't even have a glass house to live in if it weren't for those men over there, losing brothers in arms to these Muslims who act only out of jealousy and shame of a better way of life.

I'm told a story of a man of faith, spending a year in Afghanistan giving aid to the men women and children there. A year dedicated to helping out a nation that we have been at war with, that we have done much for infrastructure and the freedom of those people. He said after a year there, he returned to the states, and all of his efforts, he felt that they were not appreciated, that the people there were a form of evil, a form of human being that could not be classified as recognizable for what we know. A people that are stuck in a time and a value system that doesn't apply to the rest of the world, that can't relate, can't fit into our world so much that the only thing they care about is tearing down the rest of the world to their level, starting with out nation. That man joins the Army, becomes an Infantry officer so that he may go back to Afghanistan and kill the very people that he had tried to help for a year.

This makes me proud. Proud that an outsider realizes that whatever we do, however we are judged by our own society, that those judgements are hollow. They hold no water, and that if the people of America would just allow us to do our damn job and not worry about how we accomplish our mission, just that we accomplish it. Unfortunately the years of public and political opinions in the military have led to us needing serious reform. A microcosm of the United States in general, we must reverse our trends and work to preserve what we have. If you can't see that the end of the US is close, than you're not looking, you're just living and seemingly just for yourself.


One shot, one kill

Livin' Dyin' Tryin'

Panic washed over me in a surprise wave as the feeling in the pit of my stomach made me suddenly realize that I hadn't felt this way in years. That I hadn't felt anything in sometime. I sat and thought resolutely trying to remember  the last time I felt the emotions that most would call normal. My ice cubes now melted as I nursed my drink, I paid little attention to the T.V. I was watching from across the bar, but my eyes remained glued.

It had been a long time under the water of work and life, and I was finally catching a breath. As relieving as that can sound, it's now allowing me time to think, time for those feelings to bubble to the surface, to pop open; for me to address them. 

I must have gotten so involved in work, so involved in keeping busy and making plans, making reservations, returning video tapes, that I simply didn't realize what I had been putting aside, why I hadn't been feeling. I felt vulnerable a year ago, I shut down, increased my work load, kept busy, kept distracted, focused elsewhere. Everything had been the same, but different, but mostly the same. I was unsure of why I now ran from the feelings that I had coveted, been so proud of having for so many years. Been so proud of the mastery of them. I hadn't allowed myself to come into contact with them even when I tried to squeeze them in, force them out, search and find them. 

I struggle to place a finger on the constant up and down of my now free flowing emotions, now unlocked from their cage way down in my subconscious. It had been a lie, counterfeiting myself all the way to self imprisonment. I look around the bar, and though I know I'm not crazy, I feel my vulnerability at it's peak and I try to take the target off of my back. 

I dispatch my plans on the account of the new found confusion and head toward home. I find myself sad and excited in a strange ecstasy of something I'd missing; living. It's cold, but I roll down the windows and turn up the radio, '... I don't want a lot for Christmas...'

baby all I want for Christmas is you

Suture Up My Future

This week has made me feel like a kid during their first week of high school. My breath trembles slightly, but I remain calm. Images flash through my mind, narrated by yang and he's only asking questions. Doubt. The path I've just set forth for myself is one that I wouldn't have expected a younger less aware me to make. One that I couldn't have made.

The alarm chirps like a bird from the depths of hell. I dismiss it with a math problem and the sum of that problem has made me more awake, aware. Snot is drained to one nostril and I can feel it through the breath of my blinks. Sitting up isn't an issue, but it's something I don't want to do. I move like I belong to a home of the old, but manage to get my socks on myself. It's early and I yearn to wake up when I haven't beat the sun to it.

There are things we do, choices we make that are determined by two paths. Do I want to do this, or do I not want to. Sometimes the hardest pill to swallow is the one you know is going to stick in the throat on the way down. The small amount of saliva is only going to unleash Bruce Lee from the pill to kick the inside of the throat. It fights you going down, but later on you'll feel better. These choices are all too often one's that we don't make. The easy route, that's way easier.

Recognition of a problem doesn't do much without resolution of the problem. Sharpening the knife won't do any good unless you plan on using it to bone. I'm not sure what reason we are here on earth. Everyone has an idea or angelical philosophy on the matter. We obviously have animal instincts that have yet to adapt to the lifestyles that we try and live by. I don't know a lot about what we are here, or why we are here, but I do feel like we are not living up to our full potential, that we lack a serious depth of concern for one another. I see the way things operate in our world, and there's a very sad cut-off between those who have power, and those that do not. Greed is a disgusting disease and there seems to be many affected by it.

I'm tired of talking, tired of lacking the strength to persevere, to watch injustice's waves smash against the foundation of what I believe to be true, tired of good men doing nothing and terrible men reaping the benefits, tired of the suffering, tired of the inaction. I'm acting, I'm leading. Grab my coat tails and follow me, or be strewn about in my wake. Welcome to the beginning of a new era, because I just sutured up my future. You have been warned.


The Era, Vulgaris~ Just stare at the lights while you drool in the dark.