I Bleed Green (You Know You’re out of Uniform, Right?)

The days will bleed together,

Long and steaming.

Thick cammie material will make you puddle.

 

Mud and green war paint will infect your pores.

Kevlar is unnecessary,

your regulation hair is a suitable antiballistic shield.

 

Never, under any circumstances, admit pain.

Run until you vomit.

Run until bone breaks through skin,

no other injury is acceptable.

 

Do not waste free hours with useless sleep.

Use the time to IP, polish, prep and study.

 

Your weapon is your life.

Know every part of it.

What is her serial number?

How do you clear her chamber? (TAP RACK BANG)

How clean are her working parts?

 

Make no mistake:

Your weapon might be female,

but you are not.

You are Candidate.

One of approximately 70.

If found passable,

you will become one of approximately 40.

Only the Spartans survive that long.

 

You will learn to live with hairy legs

And athlete’s foot

And upper respiratory infections

And sleeping at the position of attention

And wading through face-high mud.

 

Marines eat mud.

And babies.

Oorah.

Get some.

Kill Kill Kill.

 

Remember these terms:

Head. Rack. Deck. Bulkhead.

Squared away, good to go?

PT (gimmie some).

 

One. Two. Three. Four.

I LOVE THE MARINE CORPS.

Asphalt (redux)

I am a mustang in a box stall.
I am a saguaro, gone ten years without rain.
I am a rider on a lame horse.
I am a biker without a Road King.
I am a Chevelle on blocks.
I am a Comanche in a trailer on barren California desert.
I am Frank T. Hopkins in the Wild West Show.
I am Glenn Frey with no strings to pluck.
I am Annie Oakley in a corset.
I am the cowboy watching his range shredded by barbed wire.
I am the map dot circumvented by the highway.
I am the desperado told to settle.
I am the mustang in a box stall.

I don't update this thing like I used to.

Now, I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now for my political philosophy class. Naturally, this is more interesting.

One day, I'd like to have a love like this:

In the Hills

I'm stuck in this room
with florescent lighting.
Outside it's bright
the sky is blue
the trees are green
the air is clear.

I miss that place
in the mountains.
Open plains
rolling hills.
The way the air touched my skin.
The ocean in the distance.
The freedom all around me.

For days I could wander
and never be found.
But i know where I am.
I see the deer
the cattle
the bobcat crouched in the tall grass.
No houses.
No cars.
Just freedom.

I miss
that place.

If Only in my Dreams

I have this fantasy life where:

I feel completely comfortable in a bikini having my picture taken.

I'm the girl on the arm of that guy.

I don't have to worry every time I run my debit card.

I don't have to wonder where my boyfriend is or who he's with.

Running is a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

I have the time to go to the beach.

My biggest worry is that my highlights are growing out.

I can travel. Just somewhere.

I can get a decent night's sleep.

My decisions are easy.

I don't do anything just because it's necessary for survival.

I don't feel like everyone I know is leaving me behind.

I can sit back and just enjoy every day.

Buying requisite books for school and uniforms for work isn't going to put me in debt of any kind.

I have a should to lean on.




I just want to rest. Just for a little while.

1,000 Ships

I've had a hard time finding the motivation to write as of late. It's hard to find things worth writing about anymore. That which is worth the effort is too personal to be published here.

I finished reading Margaret George's "Helen of Troy", one woman's imagined account of Helen's life, from her childhood in Sparta to her death of old age. Since there is no historical record of Helen or even of Troy, this is pure fiction based on what we know of Mycenaean culture at the time and the other writings about the Trojan War. Few ever really delved into Helen herself, and even fewer explored what her life was like after the fall of Troy. Naturally, that's the part that has always intrigued me. To scratch the surface of the story, you have a woman who has been trapped her entire life by her seemingly unparalleled beauty. Then for no apparent reason she shirks her crown, her husband, and her daughter to run away with a man half her age. She brought brought with her destruction on literally a legendary scale.

While I disagree with George's portrayal of Helen as a hapless victim of the god's wills, it does at least give credence to the fact that human control only extends so far. We can only control so much of that which surrounds us. According to the story, the Trojans assumed that no one would actually make a war over a woman, let alone a war that lasted over ten years.

The novel touches on several issues, the most glaring is of child-parent relations. Helen questions her lineage to Zues and distrusts him, while Aphrodite claims Helen as her daughter in spirit, though Aphrodite repeatedly abuses Helen and sends her on a path of destruction. The characters are constantly working to right their parent's wrongs, to avoid their parent's fates, and to generally separate themselves from their parents. It is in this constant effort that they lose themselves and tumble along the paths set for them anyway.

More interesting and more subtle is the implication, especially in the end of the novel, that there are two kinds of people in this world: The first is the most common; people who live ordinary, happy lives interspersed with brief moments of sadness and trial, but otherwise their days are peaceful and unexceptional. Then there are those who live lives of tragedy; these are people who fight their entire lives for few fleeting moments of peace and joy. Everything is a trial, a test. Nothing can be simple for them as it is for the first people. They labor for just those brief moments, and those moments have a sweetness the first people cannot fathom. And then the moment is gone and it fills them with an emptiness that only they can understand. They can never get these moments back, no recreation will suffice. Their lives are a series of tragedies interspersed with shining moments of triumph, but the shine quickly fades.

But the latter are strong, they are the survivors. They experience unparalleled joy and unparalleled sadness. The former live in a happy ignorance of what they're missing.

At the end of the novel, Menelaus prays that his grandson never becomes a hero and lives a simple, peaceful life. Helen prays the same. However, it is not what either wished for themselves. They both surrendered great things to live lives of tragedy. Helen voluntarily walked away from her own daughter for just a wisp of the kind of rapture she instinctively knew she was missing. Menelaus sat on the beaches of Troy with his countrymen while doing so plunged his nation into depression for over a decade for one day to triumph, to be a hero. These people wish simplicity on others, but not on themselves.

And so I sit here looking out over a cloudy bay and at pictures of a place in the woods I will probably never see again, and I think about those I have loved and lost. I think back on a life I used to have and I wonder if there is anything I could have done to keep it. I wonder what steps I could have taken to maintain those relationships, to keep that happy ignorance. But I look in the mirror and I know I was only ignorant for brief flashes, that I've always known it would be this way. Like Helen, I prefer the struggle because I know on some level there is a greater prize for greater hardship.

If I can just get over this next obstacle, I can see what awaits me on the other side.

Movie Review: Stop Loss

I'm taking a stand and doing this review without having seen the movie. And I don't intend on seeing it, either. I just feel the need to lay out exactly why this movie looks so horrifically off-base I was, for possibly the first time in my life, fighting the urge to throw something at the movie screen and yell. Because Ryan Phillippe can hear me yelling, you know.



The premise of this film is that an army war hero returns from Iraq and is set to go into the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) after his active duty contract has expired. Most servicemen and women consider the IRR "getting out" of the service because most servicemen and women are never called back to active duty. Phillippe's character is more than ready to return to civilian life. However, at least according to the movie trailer and IMDb website, he is almost instantaneously recalled to active duty upon returning home. This is what some people call being "stop lossed"- prevented from going off active duty in a time of war. Kerry called this a "backdoor draft". Phillippe's character, like some servicemen and women, apparently didn't read his contract and decides that this act is a "breach of contract" (I'm quoting the trailer here) so the next logical step is for him to go AWOL so he can get legal help for this matter.

Let's ignore for a second the fact that this movie is asking for you to have sympathy for a soldier who is more than willing to let his buddies get the big green weenie and go back to war while he runs away. Let's even ignore the fact that this is a soldier (and there are more like him) who thinks that all deployments are voluntary actions and you shouldn't have to go on deployments that you don't like. I'm going to go into the legality of this issue as why this movie, and the idea that it is making people that something completely illegal IS legal, makes me want to stab myself in the eye.

From the DD Form 4/1, The Standard Enlistment Contract (every soldier, sailor, Marine and airman reads and signs this before he or she can join the service), Section 9(c): "In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of
the United States."
Section 10(a-c): a. FOR ALL ENLISTEES: If this is my initial enlistment, I must serve a total of eight (8) years. Any part of that service not served on active duty must be served in a Reserve Component unless I am sooner discharged. b. If I am a member of a Reserve Component of an Armed Force at the beginning of a period of war or national emergency declared by Congress, or if I become a member during that period, my military service may bextended without my consent until six (6) months after the end of that period of war. c. As a member of a Reserve Component, in time of war or national emergency declared by the Congress, I may be required to serve on active duty (other than for training) for the entire period of the war or emergency and for six (6) months after its end."

It actually goes into even further detail about these practices so that there is NO WAY a serviceman/woman can enlist without knowing that their active duty contract may be extended. But then you get soldiers like this character who agree to it only on the condition that they never have to fulfill their obligations.

According to Wikipedia, only one person has one a suit about this. The National Guardsman had already completed his STANDARD EIGHT YEAR CONTRACT THAT EVERYONE SIGNS including his agreed to IRR time, so he was granted clemency. Because, unlike the character of this film, he actually did fulfill his contract and "uphold his end of the bargain."

A whole 'nother issue that I foresee with this film is that it seems to portray a solider coming home from deployment and being told he will immediately be redeploying. I'm not going to go off on this too much because in all fairness, I haven't seen the film! I have no idea if that's how they will cover it, but that's how it's presented in the trailers. Not including the leave that soldiers get after a deployment and the fact that deployment preparation, or "work up", takes months, unless an individual soldier is being sent on a special assignments, entire units don't deploy and redeploy back to back. I believe there's a "rest" period they all take in between. And unless they are a quick reaction force, or some other unit that is on stand by, no unit is somehow sucker punched by a deployment. They know well in advance, as in years in advance what the deployment rotation is slated to look like.

To sum: every military man or woman agrees to being stop lossed before they ever even go to their basic training. They sign the contract.

And despite what some little "shit birds" as they are commonly known will tell you, you can't pick and chose deployments either. You agree to follow lawful orders. That's why these lawsuits don't work.