First, concerning my last entry, I just wanted to say, quite matter of fact, that writer’s write. My grandmother, who is largely responsible for nurturing my imaginative side when I was young, always told me that dishonesty was perjury in the face of the Lord. My mother, an equally brilliant woman, raised me to believe that half measures were not something that decent men relied on to protect themselves from scrutiny. So last night, or, more to the point, very early in the morning, after getting off of a flight, I put down in words how I have honestly been feeling over the last few days. I am not ashamed of it. Nor am I unaware of its import. Of course, it shouldn’t be discounted that having been bed ridden because of food poisoning and having my body coursing with drugs is bound to stir up some interesting things, but I don’t believe that anything that I wrote was too far off the mark. Do I feel lost? Yes, I do. But having said that, who doesn’t? I suppose it just comes down to whether you’re willing to admit it or not. I have led a very peculiar life, one that in my twilight years I’m sure I will reflect on with a great deal of perplexity. But, in the end, this is the life that I have chosen to lead. There have been positives and negatives, just as there are in most things. And as in all things in this life, you take the bad with the good.

That said; giving up isn’t an option. But being human enough to write about feeling as though you would like to certainly is.

Mental Photographs In The Land Of Plenty

America. A nation caught between its infatuation with celebrity, sex, consumerist zealotry and ‘traditional values’ replete with contradictions, loopholes, and hypocrisies. Cities teeming with tensions both new and old attempt to hide them amidst the serenities of calming home furnishing outlets, gleaning new car paint, and identically constructed strip malls conveniently placed to provide a sense of comfort and familiarity. And yet, despite the continuity of its common surface features, the hearts of America’s unseen ghettos and disparaged communities still beat, living testaments to an experiment long gone awry. It is from these places that her ‘best and bravest’ have been routinely plucked and sent thousands of miles to defend a way of life that most of them have no understanding of. And on the other side of her now weed covered tracks, the parlors and front rooms of the well to do are aglow with the eerie blue light of massive plasma televisions tuned in to images of their neighbours, never met or befriended, marching through foreign landscapes laden with weapons and the heaviest of all burdens – the self proclaimed possession of the moral high ground.

I have, in my life, traveled this nation extensively. I have had members of my own family serve in its Armed Forces and fight in its wars. I have seen her best and her worst. I have seen the growing obesity that plagues her population, the insularity that many Americans cling to so as not to have to face the realities of the actions of their leaders, nor their own role in empowering them, and, of course, the rising religious fanaticism and xenophobia that has become vastly prevalent. America is rotting from the inside out, and while those at its core are willing to admit as much, those distanced from it refuse to believe it possible.

Kids no older than twenty wander through major US airports with plastic limbs, reliant on canes and wheelchairs. They are America. They pass through the throngs of other travelers like apparitions, prosthetic limbs where arms used to be, haircuts that feebly cover up a patchwork of scars that one might expect to be depicted in the pages of a Mary Shelley novel. When you see them it hits you. That despite the majority going about their daily business, this is a nation at war – a war that has become dangerously silent. It is a phenomenon that is not limited to this nation either, but one that exists at home as well.

There are those that call them ‘heroes’. There are those that call them ’survivors’. They may very well be both, but one thing they will always be is ‘victims’. That no matter how they feel about their personal conduct, or the politics behind their deployment, they will spend the rest of their lives plagued by the frozen photographs locked in their heads. And that is a price that no man or woman should have to pay.

Though many of you might not be aware of it, Roy actively served in the 82nd Airborne from 1984 to 1986. All toll he actively served in the US Army from 1983 to 1989. During that period he spent time ‘liaising’ with locals in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua - even though the United States Armed Forces were never ‘officially’ there. He also served in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. During that time he also saw some rather disturbing things, things that still cause him problems decades after the fact. In one instance he had to treat a fellow soldier who had an unexploded RPG pass right through the center of their body. All he was able to do was shove a bag in the hole in hopes of containing the man’s insides, which obviously did nothing to help. When something has passed through the middle of a person’s body in such a way that you can see clear through them, there’s nothing that can be done for them except to react as you’ve been trained to react, which is to expediently treat the wound before the individual in question is whisked away to a field hospital where they are subsequently pronounced dead. Of course, the soldier that died in that instance perished in a ‘training accident’ because, as I’ve mention, the US military was never ‘actually’ in the location in which it happened, another tidbit that has also haunted Roy for decades.

Listening to him talk about it is not at all pleasant, and it is more than apparent that it makes him massively uncomfortable. “Dead Priests and Nun’s”, he repeats, his countenance blank, as if attempting to repeatedly ram home the severity of the actions of those that his contingent trained while in Central America. He does not elaborate, emphasizing instead little horrors confined to simple sentences.

Roy, it seems, even after all these years, is American too.