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...
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Back Again
Five days, three continents and four countries later I have arrived. Not nearly at the final destination on my itenerary, but at least in the same region. I found that instantly away from the distractions that home brings, I've slipped back into a cool and calm stance on what must and has to be done. I'm enthralled on the plate of readiness and certainly itching as ever to get on with it.
Being home only a week ago, around family was a great send off. I can't believe how great of a family I have. So caring, and so close in ways that I rarely see other families. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to when I was home, but that's the way it normally goes. With so many good people in my life, I struggle to find time to visit with all of them.
But here I sit, surrounded again with infamous smells and culture. I realize how different my attitude has adjusted, and how idly ready my mind, soul and hands have become. Work ethic will be unmatched along with my determination. Ready is a word that only resembles what it is I truly am.
I will write as often as I can. Submerged in myself once again, free for thought and opinion expression.
Being home only a week ago, around family was a great send off. I can't believe how great of a family I have. So caring, and so close in ways that I rarely see other families. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to when I was home, but that's the way it normally goes. With so many good people in my life, I struggle to find time to visit with all of them.
But here I sit, surrounded again with infamous smells and culture. I realize how different my attitude has adjusted, and how idly ready my mind, soul and hands have become. Work ethic will be unmatched along with my determination. Ready is a word that only resembles what it is I truly am.
I will write as often as I can. Submerged in myself once again, free for thought and opinion expression.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
The Same is Different
The feeling in my stomach, makes me a little queezy. I've gotten off track, allowed my mind to start hoping again. It's returned emotions that I haven't felt in sometime, and for the first time in the age old cliche, I'm scared. It's not a feeling that I'm too familiar with, an otherwise oak I am floundering with this emotion I can't lasso.
There are many reasons that this could be brought about, I'm sure my upcoming deployment is one them. It's hard to be honest with myself, and with you. It's not easy to admit, in this word which has seen the fall of a man's stature abolished within the ethics and code. I strive to remain unyielding to this demise, and yet hear I sit afraid. A future, I had seen in the near horizon. A finish line beaming with opportunity and beginning. Perhaps while I was simply biding my time, so was I biding my emotions.
The feeling is a very uneasy one. Sickening really. It's immortality decreasing, becoming further from grasp as I grow and become more of an adult. It's truly understanding the weight in which I bring to the world, and how scary a concept it is that I do indeed have impact on a world I would otherwise consider to be without contact.
Harms way, is all perception. Placing myself in it, or an exponentially greater idea of it is simply creating a false reality of the sense of that phrase. I am in as much harms way now and resigned to my fate as much as any other time in my life. Life is a strange thing, no matter who we pray to or what we believe, we will never know what outcome will come of our choices and whether or not that if we were to take a different path if we wouldn't arrive at the same place we never intended to go, but instead destined to be. Of course we all point our finger of the road of life always ending with the dead end of death. But this is a narrowing point of view with all things considered.
My religious or spirtual beliefs are not coinciding or aligning with one specific stereotype or another, but I seem to have a keen sense that we are not alone. That the world isn't magnificent. That life, and death are not the end all be all. I suppose looking forward I have an infinite amount of possibilities. There are some great things that I can do in life and really my biggest fear is; will I be humble and content enough to stop when I reach my goals. So that I may live in happiness, not yearning not reaching for more and never feeling truly accomplished, even with all that I have. The perspective seems at least difficult to voice and certainly confuses me. My fear from death is what I will leave behind. What legacy? What of me will stick with others? Who will I leave behind that I will no longer be able to affect?
Those questions, so broad and not very direct. But they're so truthful in their essence of what we think about death. We spin our catch phrases and cliches and even almost believe them. You're in a better place, you're with God. We buy them like the Wal*Mart rollbacks we become infatuated with commercially. I can't say for sure what happens to us when we perish, but I am certain that it could happen at any time. So why this sudden trepidation? This sudden fear? This overwhelming, sickening feeling that has haunted me, made me older the last few weeks? My immortality, peeled like the skin of a snake and left. Gone, like dust in the wind. Life is suddenly real. Death, no longer a falacy.
Who's to say what we are to say, when we are to say it?
There are many reasons that this could be brought about, I'm sure my upcoming deployment is one them. It's hard to be honest with myself, and with you. It's not easy to admit, in this word which has seen the fall of a man's stature abolished within the ethics and code. I strive to remain unyielding to this demise, and yet hear I sit afraid. A future, I had seen in the near horizon. A finish line beaming with opportunity and beginning. Perhaps while I was simply biding my time, so was I biding my emotions.
The feeling is a very uneasy one. Sickening really. It's immortality decreasing, becoming further from grasp as I grow and become more of an adult. It's truly understanding the weight in which I bring to the world, and how scary a concept it is that I do indeed have impact on a world I would otherwise consider to be without contact.
Harms way, is all perception. Placing myself in it, or an exponentially greater idea of it is simply creating a false reality of the sense of that phrase. I am in as much harms way now and resigned to my fate as much as any other time in my life. Life is a strange thing, no matter who we pray to or what we believe, we will never know what outcome will come of our choices and whether or not that if we were to take a different path if we wouldn't arrive at the same place we never intended to go, but instead destined to be. Of course we all point our finger of the road of life always ending with the dead end of death. But this is a narrowing point of view with all things considered.
My religious or spirtual beliefs are not coinciding or aligning with one specific stereotype or another, but I seem to have a keen sense that we are not alone. That the world isn't magnificent. That life, and death are not the end all be all. I suppose looking forward I have an infinite amount of possibilities. There are some great things that I can do in life and really my biggest fear is; will I be humble and content enough to stop when I reach my goals. So that I may live in happiness, not yearning not reaching for more and never feeling truly accomplished, even with all that I have. The perspective seems at least difficult to voice and certainly confuses me. My fear from death is what I will leave behind. What legacy? What of me will stick with others? Who will I leave behind that I will no longer be able to affect?
Those questions, so broad and not very direct. But they're so truthful in their essence of what we think about death. We spin our catch phrases and cliches and even almost believe them. You're in a better place, you're with God. We buy them like the Wal*Mart rollbacks we become infatuated with commercially. I can't say for sure what happens to us when we perish, but I am certain that it could happen at any time. So why this sudden trepidation? This sudden fear? This overwhelming, sickening feeling that has haunted me, made me older the last few weeks? My immortality, peeled like the skin of a snake and left. Gone, like dust in the wind. Life is suddenly real. Death, no longer a falacy.
Who's to say what we are to say, when we are to say it?
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