O-u-t-t-a h-e-r-e.
Before something breaks off.
For the safety of those around me and myself.
To think.
To be still.
To drive fast.
(when I think I can get away with it.)
To play car music at eardrum bleeding levels.
I am outta here.
I suggested to a friend I might be headed her way.
I have a friend in Austin I might look up.
or I simply might just make it my mission to hit every Chik Fila between here and the Hill Country and call it good.
I don't know.
I don't have a map.
I'm not packed.
I haven't been to the bank.
I haven't told my kids
and I just got some form of acquiescence from my significant other before we got out of bed this morning. Or I assume it is acquiescence--he's out checking the oil and the tire pressure as I type this.
I figure if I have no clear aim when letting go of the rubber band stretched tauter and tauter between my fingers over the last few months then I can't be disappointed with it's eventual target.
Worst case scenario:
I'll need a new rubber band when I come back.
I have those.
Then there is checkout.
At seven thousand feet and looking back, running lights
A lot of the guys sat around playing card games, dreaming out loud about what they’d do once we made it home, or they “racked-out” (falling asleep, usually on the floor, using their assault pack as a pillow). There were occasional mortar attacks — the enemy knew we were in a “target rich” environment — but as long as we were inside, the possible threat felt very remote. We were simply bored, tired, and eager to get home.
The woman mentioned near the poem’s end is not fictional: she was the wife of a man we apprehended in Balad, near the very beginning of our deployment. I saw her crying as we put him in a truck to be taken away (R.P.G.s had been confiscated from the home, along with other military equipment). An elderly woman stood beside her, cursing us, waving the bottoms of her sandals at us (a huge insult in that part of the world), and spitting at us. As I wrote this poem inside that bunker, I already knew that specific moments would revisit me over the years, and vice versa."-Brian Turner
Nathere loads the brush with river-blue oil,
I come from California’s San Joaquin valley, a place that gets fairly hot in the summertime. June through August, you can drive out on any country road and often see heat waves rising off the asphalt in the distance. This painting is ironic in the sense that, in a country that is incredibly grounded in its connections to place and history, the summer heat visually lifts distant colors and shapes in a way that seems to erase those connections.
Many of the poems I wrote in Iraq, like this one, were attempts to learn about this historically and culturally rich country, as I was experiencing it."-Brian Turner
I am putting this up from Zen Traveler's blog. It speaks to the experiences he has had living so long with Iraqis in Baghdad. Given the conversations I have been having more and more often with friends and acquaintances I felt it worth reposting on my blog. You can link to his blog just below or off my link list to the right. Reading all of Eric's blog is a worthwhile endeavor. The following were his findings after having been invited to Iraqi homes in celebration of Ramadan, a Muslim high holy season recently.
- 99% of Iraqis are profoundly grateful for what America has done for them.
- Sadam had brutalized this country and had crippled its development for years to come.
- In the past people did what they were told or their families were thrown in jail.
- There is a massive brain drain flowing from Iraq to neighboring countries.
- Other Arab countries like the Emirates or Jordan have developed nicely while Iraq has gone in the opposite direction.
- There is hope now for the younger generation.
- All children are now going to school from 8:30 in the morning to 12:30 in the afternoon.
- They accept the violence as an aberration and go about their daily lives trusting everything to God.
That last statement I found poignant,brave. Hope for themselves is still burning with their candles and offerings at Ramadan in spite of the horrors they have witnessed or rumors heard--rumors often cruel enough to the spirit all by themselves. It's a treacherous time for non-Muslims to be in this part of the world,true, but it is also a treacherous time for Muslims who want to live peacefully with Westerners. We really don't fathom this aspect. Media has polarized this war to suit our fast food media diet.
Michael Yon, an independent reporter in al Anbar, or the Wild, Wild West, has described scenes of evil and inhumanity not on Americans, but on local Iraqis by Al Qaeda. These are the atrocities which have galvanized American and local Iraqi forces at war with one another less than a year ago in the same area.
AQ catalyzed that galvanization in the following ways. Food and water supplies were cut off to villages only to be reintroduced weeks later by AQ, who perpetuated the mini embargos using sympathetic locals. When they weren't decpatitating men, women and children and leaving the bodies out in the open to reinforce the terror, they used dead bodies to contaminate local water supplies. Soon, after softening up a village for a few weeks in this way, AQ would come in, under the guise of humanitarian aid, and begin filling the food and water needs for said villages which often culminated in feasts of seeming celebration. Families singled out for not likely being onboard with AQ party lines would have special lunches where they would be served their baked children to encourage them to rethink their stance.
If your desire to know what is going on in Iraq outweighs the effect it will have on your heart, Michael Yon or Michael Tottens sites will literally dilate your pupils from all the light they shed on this country and her burdens.
Iraq is not Jihad.
Iraq does not wish Westerners' death.
Jihad does.
They intend without apology to eradicate any and all who are not aligned with their principles. They believe this is demanded by their God and they are willing to die and kill to do it. It is plain and heartless and unlikely to ever change in this long enduring culture, but these Iraqi people--they still have hope, they must if they see what has come to pass there as an aberration.
I won't try to explain him. The man just has to be experienced. The innocence he captures of this child playing amidst filth contradicts what you may think about professional security in Iraq. Though the word ZEN in his blog title may give it away a little.
http://zen-traveler.blogspot.com/2007/10/socks.html
I used to have this 67 Chevelle in highschool that was a monster. I loved it. My pop put a governor on it so I wasn't going 100 mph with my hair on fire... which of course I promptly learned to take off before school in a Dairy Mart parking lot each day and to put back on in a bank parking lot before I got home...teach him to make us learn all that car crap just because he never had boys...served him right... although that car did singe my hair... a little.
http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html
