Coming Soon.
I accomplished surprisingly little today, for all it feels like a monumental achievement.
I did all of my laundry and laid out which clothes are going where over the next three weeks of craziness. I tersely reminded the reception worker for housing that his job is to assist the people he works for and that if I say I have an appointment, he will at least extend me the courtesy of checking...and as such, we've managed to procur the final arrangements for our last night in Edinburgh (which will in fact be the 26th of March....and AUIP has refused to pay for it, despite the paperwork that I'm almost certain says the program goes until the 28th of March, and despite the fact they are not providing food and tried to escape lodging for the week of March 15 and failed to notify us of this fact...more on that later) and in order to really drive home the point, we've only reserved two rooms for the five of us needing to stay, because fifteen pounds is not a great deal of money, but its fifteen pounds more than we should have to spend and besides, the floor isn't too bad.
But mostly today I've been reading and sleeping, both in short fits of desperation to escape the other and a third, lurking event. I should never invest myself emotionally into things, because I can never draw a healthy, sane line that normal, healthy, sane people do in self defense. I have no lines. I hate and love with the same excess and same reckless abandon, I absorb what I hear and see and learn into my soul and it stays there, and there are days when I feel like I need an anti-virus program of my own, to sweep out all the plauges let in because I was too stupid to know better.
I'm reading-- its a spectacular book called Jarhead, by Anthony Swofford. Professor Citino recommened I read this as part of my thesis research, and I remembered by chance while I was hunting for books in Inverness. It was on sale, so what the hell? Its a short book, and since I blasted through the six-hundred-and-some-odd-page DaVinci Code in six hours I felt this would be a half day read at worst. I've been at this for three days, and I finally finished and I'm still reading, because its still tearing at me. This book- this beautiful, pathetic, painful, poetic, sharp, slicing, caustic memoir of a marine serving in the first gulf war- hopped into my concious and my dreams and my words and I can't get rid of it. I was reading first because I was told to, then to discover WHY I was told to read it, and finally becausetimes some things, simply put, must be read.
I'm sleeping, whenever the book is just too much- too real, too honest, to beautiful, I tell myself to lay down and let the oblivion of sleep wash away the words before they too are irrevocably sautrated in my soul. But sleep lets my concience yell at me, and its almost easier to sleep in the tiny window of silence created by the snooze feature on my alarm- long enough my active thoughts blur, short enough to silence the reprimands of things I'd rather not think about.
And I'm running, or reconciling, depending, with that third, lurking event. Why can't I let go? Why do I surround myself with war and pain and hurt? It would be easier, and smarter, to walk away. After all, I kept my bargain, for all the deal turned out different than I'd expected. Those who had no one else to read letters from are coming home, and will forget they ever thought they needed me. Boredom is not so dangerous at home, there is not empty time to fill with words, empty sleep with hopeful dreams.
There's that line issue again- normal people drew that line and helped as they were called, and now they're done and they can walk away because really, everything stopped at that line. They never opened up too much, they never let anyone through and never had silly ideas about what they were really doing, that firm line between safe and dangerous filtered it all out. Except for one- he doesn't have a line either, and with the same reckless behavior that erased my line, I failed to realize this very important fact. That line! If I had one, I wouldn't be convincing myself that I've apologized, there's nothing more I can do. I wouldn't, in all likelyhood, even care- because what's done is done and its not entirely my fault and I can't do more than my best. But no, I'm fighting with my concience now because I have no line and I am hurting because when I hurt others I hurt myself and having no line is a very cold, sharp, honest place to be, and the honest truth is- the final decision isn't even up to me. But I do know one thing, and I'm reconciled to and even grateful for- if I had did have that line...I'd never have known what was there, or what I stand to lose.
I'm reading again, because this book both exacerbates and distracts my need. Thank God- I'll never have to live through this. Dear God- I know exactly what he's writing about. This polar opposite reaction, every page. I'd like to write him a letter, to compliment his work and tell him that, though I still don't know why I must read this book, I'm glad for it, and things like this book make me glad I don't have a line. Normal, sane people don't go to war with or for anyone- for their country, or with themselves. Normal people filter out books that tell us those things are really the same thing. Normal people never understand. Normal people are fighting and they don't even know it.
Sleep brings clarity, even in the most surreal of dreams. Sleep accounts for and encorperates distractions, sleep removes the personal element while personally embedding the revelations. Sometimes, the clarity transfers into the real world easily, into words and songs and breathtaking sunsets. Sometimes clarity remains only in the area between sleep and awake. This is the clarity felt inside, the instinct, the driving force, the muse. I'm glad I don't have a line. The line keeps clarity logical. I like my clarity sweet and pure and filled with the labor and sweat poured into finding it.
I'm done running. |
