Odysseus in America

Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. This book is, thus far with three chapters left to read, wonderful. It is a treasure. This man has listened to combat vets from Vietnam over many years with his heart and has done a great job in translating that complex otherworld of our souls into a form that can make sense. Through using 'The Odyssey' as allegory in explaining the processes of homecoming by a combat vet it gives us a roadmap.

Page 45 he writes about veterans combat experience as having a constant roll of the dice. I read 'The Iliad' recently and while the heroes in it fight, pitting their prowess against the other, there is also the very real sense that there is much chaos working behind the scenes of the fight. The warriors, then, have a choice... they can continue to fight as though all were decided by their own honor and virtue and skill... or they can fight (live their lives) without such notions. This latter, to me, seems to run toward cowardice eventually. For the warrior there is only one way to fight, to be, and that is as if what you do mattered, even though you know there are events, fates, that are out of your control and influence and outside of a notion of universal justice. While reading page 45 I came upon this sentence...."it is as if, having lived in a world where the dice were constantly rolling, the calm, plan-filled responsibility of civilian life (or for that matter, of peacetime military service) is intolerable". This isn't, mind you, the boredom of teenager who is without his favorite video game. When I read this I thought of the many streets I drove down in Iraq that were known IED alleys. Of seeing the wires and aiming sticks of roadside bombs, of the craters of prior exploded bombs, and more. There is, in the back of your mind, the gnawing feeling that the fates are rolling the dice whenever you start to drive down a street. How many patrols have I done? I can't begin to count.

Page 83 has some good writing on our perception on how we spoil everything we touch. This ties into some thinking I have and also might tie in with something I read in another book by Haidt on purity and such (some earlier entry, I dont' remeber) and perhaps it might bear fruit to look at this more in depth from a psychological perspective. What could Positive Psychology say about this?

After I got the call that the book had arrived I went to get it and then sat down at the coffee shop to read. After reading for a while I stopped to write. Very rough stuff to follow, transcribed out of my paper journal.

Page 4. Recovery happens only in community. Two people are not a community. Erich Maria Remarque's exerpt from the book "The Road Back" is a good example of our attitudes on getting back from war. It is on page 11 and 12.

There is great distinction between the Thumos (great hearted spirit/ heart) and the Gaster (greedy, demanding, uncultivated/ belly) of our heroes/veterans/soldiers on page 12.

Page 14. When Odysseus is in the court and the bar sings a song of Troy it brings Odysseus to tears. But to the 'civilians' it is the same as all the other tales... ENTERTAINMENT.

Odysseus doesn't talk about the war at Troy with people who show themselves incapable of hearing the stories with their heart.

Feel that ache? That subtle, almost inperceptable tingling in your arms... under your skin. Your heart feels made out of lead and you are balanced between explosive action, running away or outburst of exclamation, and roling up into a ball, shutting off the outside world. Think of a lover who has scorned you, out of the blue and without reason. Think of a dear family member who died all too soon and without knowing the depth of your love.... that sense of lost opportunity, wasted time, of injustice. Remember when you lost your job and didn't know where to go next? Creditors calling you and the sense of shame that seemed to define who you really are. Can you feel that desire, the pressing need to weep with your full weight of your soul? to let out all the anguish and dread that is drowning you in hope that you can breathe? That in weeping you can also protest the fates with all the righteousness a heartbroken soul can muster?

How can the stoic soldier, the providing father, the hero of untarnished virtue, the savior, feel such weakness? How can the brave, the best of our generation, the hope and pride of a country, express these emotions? We aren't the only heroes. Single parents working two jobs, an ICU nurse who comfortss the sick and dying, the police officer who arrests the drunk driver before a deadly crash, and more... Part of their identities of these heroes have, by definition, their care, their heart, the love for another, their selfless service to their community, a community that at times transcends even when it is rooted firmly in their local community. What of the soldier? We kill. We are the purveyors of death. We rip and maim and hurt and destroy. As a religious minded person might ask, what loving god can be a destroyer, what god of mercy can invent a place called hell, so too we ask of ourselves. for we've ridden through hell... we've gleefully unleashed the power in our arms and cunning of our mind in all its hellish fury. We've struck out with reckless abandon with Ares in all his bloodthirsty gluttony, only to find ourselves asking why in the periods of calm therafter. What hero, what human of goodness and virtue can so easily, happily, wantonly kill and still be called good?

Think this a question of no importance and you are not asking it with heart. Imagine seeing a parent with a child at a public event. The child acts up and the parent slaps the child in the face in response. You do not stop to wonder if the parent is stressed from a multitude of things, like two jobs and a foreclosures on the house with a dying parent in the hospital. No. Likely you see the person, at lest initially with your emotional/moral sense, as being bad and possibly a bad parent. It is a natural, gut reaction, an emotional judgment made in the blink of an eye. We are hardwired to do this. This same hardwired emotional/moral judging is done by ourselves in our own histories every day.

Ask the question... what good and decent person kills (when the killer is you)?

page 39. To be really home is to be emotionally present and engaged.

page 74. you have sex but you don't have intimacy. We live in a hell that is ours alone and we dont want to drag her into it, so we live in there alone and cut off intimacy. With a life partner you want to be able to share everything with her. You can't even come close, she has enver experienced anything like that. Her image is that a man goes off to fight, you're strong, you come home and you build your life. You have the reality.

Another 4th of July

I heard a commercial on the radio about an open forum to discuss if whether or not 4th of July firework displays should be toned down out of respect for veterans who are jumpy. I wasn't able to listen to the show, yet I do not think that the fireworks should be toned down. Rather than spending energy on this part, perhaps we as a society should address our veterans as members of our community... as being 'within' our community and not outside normal society. I must say that it isn't only veterans that are affected by in/out group dynamics and that other individuals, by identifying themselves with a group or the like find themselves burdenend by expectations/exceptions and viewpoints. Veterans is one of a few groups that I belong to that experience this.

I get off topic.

On the t.v. I noticed that there was a news special (KATU?) on how fireworks are noisy and lound and might cause strain on the happiness of.... pets. Pets? Really? What about mention of lots of veterans out there who go to nightclubs for the loud noise and escape the booms and bangs, or who drink themselves into numbness (me last year) or who put on headphones and loud music? Lets not talk about this on the t.v.... too divisive. You can be labled as a liberal or anti-war or unAmerican if you talk about this.

Bullshit. Because I am not for war does not mean I will not fight one beside my comrades. Because I question government policy does not make me unAmerican.

I noted yesterday that as I walked to the truck, cooler loaded and on my way to meetup with friends for a party, that I did not freak out when hearing fireworks around me. I met them at work, got the address, and we all drove to the house. As I drove down Scholl's Ferry Road, it was now dark and I liked the sight of fireworks in the sky. Then a LOUD firecracker (like a cherry bomb or something) went off at what seemed like the sidewalk as I drove by at 30 miles an hour.

FUCK! FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERIAMGOINGTOFUCKYOUUP!

That was not... I say again... NOT cool. My rig was never hit by an IED in Iraq... but one missed me one night and scared the shit out of me. I've rolled over plenty of other IEDs and IED heavy routes as well. Pucker factor is pretty damn high.

As I turned onto Barrows Street and winded through an open area the air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning fireworks. Pops and bangs all around me. Another IED went off nearby and I yelled more curses. My adrenaline was pushed up and I was chewing the hell out of a straw in my mouth. When I got to the house I cursed at fireworks across the street as I pulled the cooler out of my truck and walked to the apartment.

Inside... straight shot of bourbon and some beer. After a while I was fine and went outside and we shot off fireworks. It is like seing a snake. If I see it and know its coming, no big deal. But when it surprises me... I jump.

But all in all, except for that drive down an imagined IED alley, this 4th of July was not nearly as bad as last year. My emotions were, for the most part, much more calm than last year, and I was able to have normal social interaction with others.

Progress

I need a drink

Rarely do I turn to alchol for soothing. I can recall individual episodes in the past two decades when I needed a drink. I am going to make one now.

I've written, and I've told my therapist, about times when the feeling comes over me that I am close to falling apart into a million pieces, that I am exhausted from keeping all of the splinters that make my self togther and how puzzling it was to me to feel this sensation. I feel as though I were bound by scotch tape and that it was about to come undone and I'd explode like a supernova into a zillion pieces into the universe. I didn't understand this.

I am thinking again of the firefight in Iraq. In the last couple of counseling sessions we went to this topic and instant emotion wells up within me. The last one we ventured into it some more. I would become filled with emotion and then take a deep breath and soothe mysself. The therapist says that it is a very good coping mechanism I am using... that I am very good at it. Lots of practice. I still don't have any visual memories of what I saw down the street. I have clear memories of my hands on the rifle, the feel of it, the pulling the trigger... but not of what I saw. I know there were lots of bodies on the ground because others have said that they saw them all.

My therapist wants me to try EMDR. She says that while I don't have some signs of PTSD, I do have others... constant irritation (every damn day I am irritated by many people) and startle reflex. But there is more. As I finished a short test and we went over the results, there was also the emotionality of certain levels of intensity. I reported that when I get to a certain intensity of emotion, things fall apart and I shut down. With (my ex) we'd be making out hot and heavy and I'd get so worked up... and then I'd put the breaks on and back off. Frustrating to her and I recall the many fights that my last relationship had about this issue, which adds to more frustration on my part and a healthy dash of negative affect to the already boiling pot of emotion I am feeling. There are some other issues as well. Lack of concentration, really pissing me off in school, that I cannot focus. Also I am tired a lot of the time... mentally tired and I can't read but a few pages and I am sleepy and tired and have to close my eyes. And then we got to the concept of the amount of energy my mind is spending on repressing these things and that this is ailing me in a lot of ways and why I might feel like I might fall apart at times. That made perfect sense.

So we might try some EMDR therapy. I hope it works. I am entering a new relationship and I don't want an insane amount of baggage to deal with, nor subject her to all of this crap. It'd be nice to be able to deal with somone from a more stable platform than what I've had for the past two years.

A respite for the soul

I feel much better after yesterday's torture. I don't expect anyone else to understand save for those that know of what I speak. How do we define ourselves as noble or vile based on thought and deed and how do we transcend these categories. I feel more of a pull to the '25 Acts' that I had before. I could feel how hungry I was for it as I questioned my own nature... the hunger to reach out and do something heroic. How very easy it is to die in a fight we believe in, to let loose those energies for good, to feel the strength in our arms as it weilds a holy sword.

I bring up lots of images here, for our feeling, our understanding, of what war is and how we fight it is made of such complicated and contradictory elements. There are so many things that are not truly thought out in our daily lives but of which have emotional energy to them. When we build the fire under a complex in our lives, those complexes are fueled by archetypes underneath them, and when energies collide... look out.

The trick is to not turn from the hurtful, to not hide from the pain and confusion, but to let it come and go of its own accord. You weather the storm. You can, if you insist, stand on the deck of the small boat and scream your curses out at the wind, or you can just huddle up with some ropes and wait it out. Don't try to steer through the storm... let it take you.

A danger is that storms can crash us on the rocks and we drown. Or they can bring you into a new harbor that you've never seen before, new lands, new sights... a deepening of the soul.

How does one ensure that the ship does not break upon the rocks? I do not know. But I think that the answer is somewhere in the notion that the person 'is' the ship and that the crashing is akin to the resistance to the storm... cease resistance and move with the current.

I do not know. But today the weather is fair. I feel calm, more centered. I can still feel the animal lurking behind the trees, ready to pounce. Is the danger in trying to leash the wild? I admit that I felt, at many times during yesterday, the pull of pacifism in that I did not want to feel the effect of violence upon me again. Yet this feels as wrong as violence itself. It isn't a middle way, to balance the two, as it is a third way that is both.

I think again of Aikido... a way of harmony and I ask for the eternal gods to continue their influence... I am not finished growing... I am open. My soul dilates.

Letter to the Editor

I had a rough day yesterday. I feel better today. I go to a coffee shop and sit down with a bottle of water, a coke in a glass bottle, and a mocha, and pick up the Letters to the Editor page of the paper. There is this...

Liberal policies imperil U.S.
I read with trepidation the Supreme Court ruling concerning the military prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, that they have a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge ("Court rules for Guantanamo prisoners," June 13).

Liberal elements in this country fail to see the peril that their "feel good" policies have on the very existence of this country. They fail to understand that the very people they would set free today would also be the ones to cut their liberal throats tomorrow, if they could. Justice Antonin Scalia said it correctly when he wrote in dissent to this decision, "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today."

If I were a combat soldier and in this war zone against current enemies, this decision would give me one mandate: I do not take prisoners anymore, no matter what.

MICHAEL PILKINGTON Northeast Portland

So I cranked up my computer and sent in my own letter to the editor.... Michael Pilkington, of Northeast Portland, was quick to say "If I were a combat soldier and in this war zone against current enemies, this decision would give me one mandate: I do not take prisoners anymore, no matter what." (letter to the Editor, Wednesday, June 18).

As a combat soldier I wish to gods that those who do not understand what it is to kill another human would shut-up for good and quit their sabre rattling when it we that must carry the sword. The taking of life is lead weight that you cant get out of your blood. Its obvious that those like Mr Pilkington do not truly understand what they are saying when such generalizing statements as this are made. Kill all enemy combatants? No matter what?

I can only shake my head in disbelief at the inexperienced, naive audacity of others who know not what war is to so carelessly thrust others into its chaotic play. It is my hope that we move away from the politics of fear and toward realizing that vision of the country we can feel in our marrow.

We are the good guys (at least I feel we are) and as such we ought to hold ourselves to high standards. That means giving trial to those in Gitmo. That means no water-boarding. That means not indiscriminately killing all combatants. That also means owning up to our mistakes of the past, opening up the scrutiny of them being wrong (and ourselves being mislead or not) and moving on.

I am a conservative in that I hold that those values that make America truly America are to be cherished and guarded and defended. I am liberal in that many of those ideals have not been adequately expressed yet and we've got a lot of change to go through in order to truly be that 'city on the hill'.

Semper Fi
Eddie Black
Portland, Oregon

Raw

I went for a walk in forest park today. I carried some black coffee and three books and a journal. Only the coffee was used.

Disclaimer. I've had two plates of shrimp pasta and 3/4 bottle of an Old Vine Zinfandel (the red stuff, not the pink stuff... friends don't let friends drink white zin) and I'm typing oddly. I'm a bit buzzed right now.

So I went walking. I was in a weird state. I went into the wood looking for the gods to speak to me. I found a log crossing a creek and I laid on top of it for a while and I eventually heard an owl hoot over and over again off in the distance... at noon. I thanked the gods for being (being) with me. How often have I been in the woods? Lots. How often have I heard an owl? Rare. How often during the day at noon?

I am numb right now. I can see how this is a desired state for someone escaping hurt. This might not be escape... it could be a breather. Every boxer needs that bell now and then to sit on the stool and spit the blood into the bucket.

I came upon a Pileated Woodpecker and I tried to snap some pictures of it on my iPhone. Someday I'm going to get a good camera. I had my GPS with me and was tracking down a geocache. Due to heavy tree cover the GPS had its compass backward now and then I did a lot of bushwacking. When I got to the right spot I found the cache in short order, signed it. It was the Poet-Tree cache. I left a little two line poem.... I can't remember what I wrote... but it was something of a homage to Ani DiFranco... "So much is around me, my soul dilates". Ani DiFranco is out of the question... but my gods... to meet someone like her... I could fall in love with a soul like that!

After walking to the cache I was surprised to find that I had hiked for five hours. I was hungry, tired, and ready to eat. I went back and forth from state to state... from calm acceptance of the world around me, to anguish. I was still hurting.

I drove back home, thinking of stopping at a bar, having a beer, and turining on the laptop to write a story that is brewing inside of me. I ended up in the Cedar Hils area and at the movie theater. Didn't see it coming but it seemed like I didn't want to think, didn't want to be with anyone, didn't want to deal with it all. So I went to a movie. Like I usually do I'll see whatever is playing. I had two choices... The Hulk or The Happening. I wasn't in the mood for suspense... so I went to the Hulk. I was still in a very weird state from my last entry... and I needed some escapism.

The Hulk wasn't it.

I wasn't thinking or I would not have picked a movie about violence hidden within our selves and the theme of carrying on without the support of others and fear of hurting people.

Fuck me.

I cried often during the movie. Many scenes got me hard and I had tears running down my face. The scenes had exactly what I was feeling. He had to leave her because he was scared of what he had inside of him. He didn't trust himself with her. He was afraid of his rage, of what he might do.

I left the movie in a worse state.

I stopped at a grocery store, bought some wine and some noodles, shrimp, cheese, and sauce. At the store I couldn't look at anyone. In the parking lot outside the movie theater I was walking to the truck and a guy walked by. When he was ten paces to my left, for no reason, he turned around and walked backwards. I felt it as a challenge and wanted to turn toward him and challenge him back. I could feel the twinge of desire to beat him within me. I muttered to myself, as I closed my eyes, to not even look at him, keep walking to the truck and don't look. Its nothing. At the store I turned on my iPhone onto some music and an acoustic (the B side version) of "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan came on my phones. It set the mood as I roamed the aisles looking for food. not really roamed... I barely shuffled. When I came upon somone I would scan the other direction, not daring to look in their direction. Since the fucking movie I had odd waves of emotion creep over me. At one point I was driving and growling and baring my teeth. What the fuck is up with this?????? In the store I felt alienated from everyone around me. I could sense their positions around me, like blips on the radar, but they seemed like moving statues to me... not human. Realizing this, noticing that I was unable to empathize with them, bothered me all the more. Emotions filled me. I had long gave up trying to understand them... I was hanging on for dear life.

Back home... I opened my door with a bag in my hand. The usual routine is always the same, my two beloved cats meet me and meow for attention. They are spoiled and I love them a lot. They go to bed with me everynight and wake me up every morning. This is the first time something different has happened. This time they looked at me from across the room as I opened the door and they ran for the bedroom and hid under the bed. I was breathing hard from emotions, gritting my teeth, feeling like a monster... and my two cats, who know no fear of me, ran.

I've always said animals are good judges of character. To see them run from me only for entering the room... hurt all the more. Am I a monster? Its the question that keeps coming up over and over. How easy it would be to do harm. There are few chains keeping that part of me down, it would seem. "We are what we think" goes the saying. I pondered this on my walk. A person could desire to eat sweets and to crash the diet, yet not actually do it. A person could have urges to cheat on his wife but not follow through... so we are not only what we think. We are, in large, what we do.

Hope.

Yet... what is a killer?

I am a killer.

There was a time when I talked with someone and boasted that I'd done all the sins in the book save for killing.

.....

What can I write? I've done them all. I feel no guilt for some of them. But killing? Killing the enemy is hard enough.. but non fighters?

I am afraid of myself. I have this quick reaction in me right now that is very near the surface... very near to come out. It feels as though it would not take much for me to really jump on someone and pound them. It isn't a question of strength... it is a question of the desire to hit those vulnerable points that really hurt, that can't heal... that I know about and that I, gods forbid, want to hit during a fight. 9 pounds of pressure to snap a neck, 7 pounds of pressure to break a clavicle, 3 pounds pressure to pierce the trachea, and an easy task to disable someone for life.

I am so afraid right now that I can't think. I've friends that love me that I want to call... but I don't. I feel as a leper, as something evil.

I know this is an emotional storm. As much as I desire everlasting peace (don't entertain the notion anymore) I tell myself that it'll end... just hang on and this too will pass. Eventually I'll be in calmer seas again and perhaps I can help others like me. Until then... I am hanging onto shadows and smoke.

blood and anger

spots of blood... thick, fat, round splats of blood along the bar floor. It got my attention. I was doing my closing duties, wiping down the bar, moving in circles, and I noticed the blood on the floor, on the bar tap, on the espresso machine... fat and dark red. I looked at my left hand, the one with a large birthmark on it that bleeds easily when nicked and scratched. There was a solid line of blood on my finger. The other finger was covered in bandage and finger condom from a cut fifteen minutes prior and now I had another one.

Actuallyt it was a piece of glass stuck into my finger. It was small, the size of a 1/4 of a pencil eraser. I pulled it out with my teeth and the blood started to leak out good then. I went and bandaged myself up. We were closed and I was getting ready to leave the bar for home and a beer.

The day started out on the wrong foot. I was running late to work and that put me on edge. At work we got a pop and the servers were working their asses off. It was all I could do to keep up. There were questions of how they could assist me, what could they pour. I was in the weeds already and to be asked questions, when I am in a bad state of mind, only frustrates me more. I told everyone to talk elsewhere, not around me, and stay out of the bar (out of my way).

At the end of the rush I had a cup of coffee and some ice cream and let myself unwind a bit. It did me a world of good. However, near the end of the night I was getting more and more frustrated. The issue, as stupid an issue as there is, was on water glasses. I had a dishwasher full, two sinks full, the top filled to overflowing, and servers kept bringing me water glasses. I wash the bar glasses and enough water glasses to keep the bar stocked. Yet I was getting behind in other things because of washing so many fucking water glasses. When I asked several times the same servers would continue to bring me fucking water glasses. 1/2 the glasses washed are water glasses and I'm behind in everything now. The answer given to me by the servers was that they didn't want to 'walk all the way back to the kitchen' to take them back. Basically, fuck you that your are busy, I'm going to put them here anyway. That's what I heard. I got angrier and angrier. Still they came. I exploded and bitched even more, threatening to turn off the entire dishwasher and they could take all the fucking glassware to the back dishpit. I was argued with and I was already pissed off. I was told 'to get another job' if I couldn't do this one. This pissed me off more. I am the fastest bartender at the company. I was told it was a silly thing to get pissed off about. And while it I was arguing and getting pissed off, one of the waitstaff who is as competent as a one legged blind man, laughed at my anger and walked off.

I write all this out to show the pettiness of it all. For I realize it. Both sides are in the fault, me and the servers. Fine. But when that ##### laughed at me as I was getting amped up for a fight, something clicked in me. I wanted to hurt people... really, really, really hurt people badly. I'm not talking about a fistfight... I am talking to do serious damage. I wanted blood. I wanted the entire room of people to experience pain as much as I could dish it out. I was aware of many objects around me, at that time, that I could use to inflict pain, if not kill.

A coworker tried to calm me down and did a great job at it. He was just enough to calm me but not enough to get me angry at him. I was almost out of the room when I heard another laugh and I wanted to go back in. He helped me not to.

The casual person might say that, yes, I was angry and that I wanted to throw down. The casual person has no fucking idea. I did not write above that I wanted to punch a couple of people in the face and gloat over them, or to hit them and get them to shut up, or to punch them and therfore 'win' the argument. No. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to really hurt them.

Writing that last paragraph scares me. If you don't see how it would, you do not understand how much I wanted to hurt them. I fought the urge to run out into the parking lot, just to get away from temptation. I wouldn't look at them and I tried to let it go as best as I could. My chest and arms felt like I had worked out and were tired and numb. I was petrified of what I had almost done. Could one more word directed at me had brougth me to put one of three sharp objects to my right hand into his and her face? Oh my god! I went up and away and called my therapist and couldn't leave a message. When the tone went off to leave my message, emotion rolled over me like an avalanche. I felt as though I were coming apart. I couldn't breathe. I wanted to fall to pieces. As I was on my third attempt to leave a message, she called and let me tell her what had happened. I told her how fearful I was of how close I had come to hurting someone. Could I have stopped myself? I felt as though I were on a wild animal with the poorest of reigns. The manager came looking for me... stuff needed to be done at the bar. I got off the phone and back to work.

As everyone left and I was alone with my thoughts I found it hard to breathe. I breathed in gasps... like I was holding my breath and remembered every now and then to breath. My mind, numb, went over what had happened. I was edgy all night and the right buttons had been pushed, the right factors, the laughter, the confrontation, it all, and I had almost lost it. I was so afraid of myself that I thought (still am) of leaving right then and driving away to someplace away from everyone. I thought of quitting my job because I was afraid of what I might do. I was then afraid that there wasn't any other jobs out there for recluses to not talk or deal with people that pay any money... and I would not be able to make my rent or truck payments. Who would hire me? I'm a crazy vet waiting to snap! What the fuck would I do?

Such a slippery slope to suicide. It doesn't have a lot of pull... but the thought did come to mind. Tired, weary, and very afraid of what I could do.... if one has a dangerous dog that bites people for no reason... you put it down... why should I be any different? In my back pocket I have some suicide hotline numbers that I give out to soldiers and their families. I know the confusion and such that they feel and I wanted to try to help them. I thought of my own needs at this time... how I wish there was another Eddie out there doing what I am doing that I could call. Who do the heroes call for help? I am no hero though.

I feel broken right now, like a lot of the big pieces were held together by tape and that tape finally came off and those big pieces fell down to the ground. I think of the other soldiers out there who might have felt something like what I am feeling and who did commit suicide. I grieve for them. I wish I could have been called by them. This thought propels me forward... to carry on... to move on and grow through this, to not give up... to be there for my comrades.

The next two days are off days for me. I am thinking of going hiking... far into the wilderness away from roads and people... to still myself and let myself fall apart onto the wild earth.

Right now I feel so very alone. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to be in that state where I want to hurt. Better to hurt yourself than another person... especially over something as stupid as water glasses. Right? This hurts.

I write all of this out so that others can read it. Maybe someone will be in a similar situation sometime and wonder, in absolute terror, how they could want to harm their wife or friend or whomever, and wonder if they are a bad person. No, my friend... you are not a bad person. You have something wired different in you that is ready for war, to respond at the blink of an eye to a threat from any direction, to kill quickly and decisively without hesitation. Once a river has cut its path through the hills, it is forever more an easy thing for water to follow that course. You are not alone in feeling this. You are not different from many others who have had to look more deeply into the abyss of darkness and death (for they are the ones delivering death to others) and have come away changed by it. I know it is easy to give up right now. I know it might sound like the safest bet, to throw in the towel. But you have to keep going, keep pushing, to see this storm through. You have your fellow solders, your family, and others, counting on you to make it through this. Don't give up. Call for help. Seek counselling. Do something. But don't give up. Don't.

Iraq revisited

This therapy session was supposed to talk about some other issues but instead I mentioned the fireworks going off near my truck as I drove down the street. Went down that road.

I'm tired right now. I had to get up very early after a late night and drive an hour and a half away to take a physical fitness test after I was feeling bad last night. Didn't go well. My eyes burn.

I'm not going to go into a blow by blow for the session. But I'll try to come up with some of the main points I thought of.

Part of the thing that due to part of what I've done in combat, or what I think I've done, give me a large sense of guilt. We were stationary and were attacked by insurgents in Baghdad. We responded. What is down the street is mental blur to me, I cannot remember it, but friends of mine tell me it was not pretty. In thinking about this guilt I said that I felt that I could not allow myselt to let go of the guilt, that it was some sort punishment that I am imposing on myself, my cross to bear. Whether my actions were real, or purely imagined, the guilt that I carry is heavy enough.

Another thought about this. I said, imagine that you have children and you wake up to realize that the night before you got drunk, blacked out, and you beat your kids severely and how sickening that would make you feel and also how questioning you would be about what sort of person you are, how good you are, etc... That is kind of how I feel, only I wasn't blacked out at the time I emptied a couple of clips. It isn't the enemy combatants that I feel guilty for... it is the busy street the combatants chose to attack us from.

I wondered if, since I am unwilling to let go of this guilt and think that I need to carry this around, if perhaps it could fuel something positive, something good in the world? My therapist remembered my idea for '25 Acts' where, according to one psychology study it takes 25 acts of heroic kindness to overcome one act of murder. I saw this idea as a healing route for myself... and it is funny... for as much as I've thought about it, I've done so for the means of helping other vets and didn't think much in my own healing.

Deora Ar Mo Chroi

Deora Ar Mo Chroí
Irish Gaelic
Tears on My Heart

Ba dheas an lá go hoíche
Na glórtha binne i mo thaobh
'S aoibhneas i gach áit gan gruaim
Áthas ar mo chroí go deo
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

Má shiúlaim ó na laethe beo
An ghrian 's an ghealach ar mo chúl
Níl uaim ach smaointe ó mo shaoil
Deora ar mo chroí go brón
He-a-ro
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

It was beautiful all day [1]
The sweet voices by my side
And beauty without despair everywhere
Joy in my heart forever
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

If I walk from the alive days
The sun and the moon behind me [2]
I'll only need thoughts from my life
Tears sorrowfully on my heart
He-a-ro
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro


Literally, "It was a beautiful day til night/nightfall".
Literally, "... on my back".

It has been a flurry of activity for me this morning. I crammed for a quiz in Astronomy this morning and took it and left, explaining to the prof that I was going to a panel of vets with a US Senator and didn't want to be late. The panel was good and I passed a handwritten business card to two people for possible opportunities helping vets in the future.

I left and walked with two vets, talking about working long hours and going to school and comparing envy of those students around us who have what seems like lives of less stress and concern. I saw three of the attendees from the roundtable, they from a community college, looking at the campus map. I offered to walk them to where they needed to go and that turned out to be abandoned and then I walked them to the new building and that turned out to be not used. There is, right now, no Veterans Center on campus.

In walking with them, however, we talked and compared notes and interests. At the end they gave me a card to contact them. They are giving resources, space, for a veterans center and need a personality to help affect change, to facilitate things, to move things, to start things, to help build a cohesive veteran group on campus and to help steer them to the resources (educational and mental health) that are available for them. I, in turn, am looking for an opportunity to put together my military experience with my concern for vets groups with my need to do a psychology practicum for PSU.

I just sent an email. Lets see if it is a good fit/opportunity. Right now it seems it would be.

I also emailed two professors asking for advice and possible advising. Both are amazing individuals and I could gain so much from their mentorship. I included a copy of my presentation on PTSD to everyone.

I was also just called by a reporter for the Oregonian who asked me some questions about my history in the military and my experience with the GI Bill.

Now I am sitting here and on my iPhone I am listening to some music and Enya's "Deora Ar Mo Chroi" comes over my headphones and I am transported back to Iraq. Before I bought an iPod I had a small MP3 player that held a dozen songs. One of the ones I had on it was this song. While down south of Baghdad with long hours every night on guard duty and long hours during the day on patrol, grabbing little sleep and so forth, I would put this song on repeat and fall asleep to it. I had no idea what it meant, it is in Gaelic, but it was soothing and calming and I understood it with my heart. It was a cherished means of peace in an unpeaceful place.

What is the source of the emotions that well up as I listen to this.. it is not nostalgia. I've felt this before in times of peace because underneath this peace is a sense of something... something like... sacrifice. Something along the lines of we know what happiness is if we've experienced fully what sorrow is and that when feeling the subsequent joy there is, in framing it, a rememberence of that darker time.

But that time wasn't that dark for me. I wasn't scared all the time. I was just not at peace. I've still not fully figured out what my experience has wrought within me, but it is a deepening and a gathering of complexity.

A useful analogy I used in therapy yesterday was that of a star. A star in a binary system (two stars orbiting each other) may get mass from another star over time. That mass in turn creates greater and greater density which in turn has greater gravity and this presses the mass closer together leading to greater density and so forth. When the magic number (I believe it is 1.4 solar mass, but I am neglecting my astronomy studies) is reached core collapses upon itself and rebounds out in a Super Nova! I am a potential supernova... I feel it... yet I do not have enough density yet and I move in many circles, read many things, seek many experiences, trying to add as much mass as possible to my core self, to increase its density. When that magic number is reached...

... my life will nolonger be my own. I am not afraid of turning my life over to service, to something larger than myself. I am on the edge of exploding... but not quite there yet.

warriorhood

I have a new book that I bought. It is called "An Operators Manual for PTSD". The foreward is befitting a retired Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps... it is one page, short, and to the point. No dancing around bushes and no setting up elaborate premises. Sgt Maj's are, if anything, direct.

In the foreward, the SMAJ (pronounced "smadge") says that "regardless of conflict, approximately 15% of all combat veterans develeop PTSD". This struck me with a new thought. THE VIEW by many combat vets, or at least those that I've dealt with personally, and indeed the military mindset, is that this 15% are those nonhackers. There is a saying in the Marines... that "there is always that 10%" meaning, there is always that small group of people that aren't up to the standard of being a Marine (and the standards are high).

My question and concern deals with how we are grouping the 15% that develop PTSD with the nonhackers. It is an unspoken assumption that the two categories are of the same population. This is much the same that some right-wing conservatives will assume that the numbers of homosexual and child molestors are tapping into the same population of sexual deviants. (note, I do not, in any way, believe that homosexuality is deviancy. I am expressing a trended belief of many).

Question. Are those that develop PTSD of the same category as those 'non hackers" who cannot live up to the ordeals of being a warrior? I say, most emphatically, NO.

This begs us to define what a warrior is. In Plato's Republic there are the three aspects of the soul as reason, spirit, and desire and their interest being knowledge/honor/pleasures in that order. This gives us the class of philosophers/warriors/commoners. Wisdom is the hallmark of the philospher, temperance that of the commoner (hey people, its about not being so damn crazy in your spending sprees for crap!) and courage is that virtue of the warrior. Justice transcends all.

There is a basic nature of the soul, its main interest, what class works best for it, and the virtues associated with it. For the soul that hungers for reason, it's interest id knowledge and one should become a philosopher and extol wisdom. The soul type best for warriors, or Plato, is Spirit and our main interest is HONOR, our virtue is courage.

What is given lipservice to, at times, is this notion of honor. I happen to think that Plato was on to something here. Honor IS our watchword. It is a guiding theme for the military. We ARE manifestations of honor and we do so against overwhelming odds... enacting our virtue of courage to do so.

So, again, question. Can one be a warrior and not feel what honor is? One can be a fighter... but warrior is a different term. Warrior is sacred, it is a role given by the community. A fighter is an individual that fights for self interest. A warrior does so for his/her community. A warrior is different because of this concept of honor (which brings with it notions of sacrifice and whatnot). Somehow we've gotten mixed up between what a warrior is and what a fighter is and we've confused the two. At grappling combat training the instructor, a referree and trainer for the UFC, told us that the definition of a warrior is "someone willing to get into a fight". This was appealing to the mass of men in those circles that were training to grapple and pummel. Yet I disagree with this. A mother who is defending her children against an attacker is not a warrior. She is fierce, she is strong, she will kick your ass nine ways till sunday, but she is not a warrior. Is she willing to enter that fight? If you have any doubt, go mess with a mother's children. I'll see you in the hospital.

No. A warrior is someone who has tapped into that rage and agression that makes one tear flesh and smash bone, to destroy with all the fury of Ares, and yet, does so within the confines and dictates of honor. Honor is defined different ways in different cultures, and yet among disparate tribes, groups, warriors, clans, armies, there is a notion of what honor is. At times those notions do not recognize each other (The British Army's distaste for the sniping techniques used by Roger's Rangers during the American Revolution, or the British against the Ottoman Army techniques a century later, or by American Infantry against the Mahdi Army techniques in OIF2), but there is some concept of honor.

The smart tactictian will not assume that his enemy will fight by the rules he himself employs, that the dictates of honor he follows is followed by his enemy. This is not a post on tactics. This is one on warriors and PTSD.

What do we, as American veterans, define as honor? There is a deep understanding of this and I believe it is connected to the group of those feel remorse, grief, and guilt over their actions in combat. What I am saying is that those who are more aligned to the concept of warrior are also those who are more likely to develop PTSD because of their deeper connections to what honor is.

The reason for the development of PTSD is, then, not a fault with their own shortcomings as warriors, but instead for the shortcommintgs of the communal environments they find themselves in. We hold within us what is the warrior ideal, but seek to live it within the rules and norms of a society, or culture, or group that says that men and soldiers can only act in very narrow terms. For gods sake, look at the hatred we (the machismo manly culture) have for efeminate males. Men hate homosexual males not because of the male/male sex, but because it is unmanly to be submissive or to act in any manner not deemed manly. Take a man that is heterosexual and give him 'feminine' qualities and he is hated as well. The policy of 'dont ask don't tell' works as long as the homosexual male in question is able to conform to all expectations of domination as befitting a male as required of him.

This is, to me, a very odd state to find ourselves in. How did we get in this spot? The answer is, I fear, very complicated and long in the making.

But back to my point. What if I could find a way to address what a warrior is so that it leaves open a means of communcation of emotional turmoil? What if I found a means of introducing what a warrior is so that one could openly grieve?

I think of the Masaii tribe and how their males do not show any pain at all. A professor told of his going through the ordeal of being ritually burned and his having to show no pain. He raised an eyebrow while they poked a burning stick onto his chest (scarring him). He didn't do great, but he did well and was hence accepted by the Masaii.

There is something to this. For it is a natural response to go into combat and to close of emotions. If you didn't, you'd go mad as you killed and maimed. We want our warriors to be able to go forth and kill. To not do so is to not be a warrior. And what human can kill without remorse? Monsters, as we call them.

And yet here is the crux of what I am saying... what sort of monster (the killing machine without emotion) can feel honor?

Think about that for a second.

The mind is able to heal itself. The brain can change itself. The emotions can evolve and heal themselves. We are resilient beings.

We recruit many men to become warriors. The ads for the Marines are excellent examples. They speak to us on deeper levels, as warriors, to be among warriors. It is why I joined. We go and fight and live as warriors and come back to a civilian life that doesn't understand what a warrior is, the fierce joy in fighting (fightin is always bad they say, war is always evil (what then of those that fight a war?) and fallen warriors are 'wasted' lives). There is no place among the communal table for the sacred warrior to sit. Other venerated roles are there, the teacher, the professor, the firefighter, the policeman (at times, at times not), the farmer, the parent, and others. But the warrior is not there. The warrior is, instead, an ending for the sympathy of the yellow ribbon on the back of your car, he is something to feel sorry for because he wasted his time, lost his buddy for a wasted cause, and is changed forever. Don't talk to him Johnny, just be polite and keep moving. We are, still, outcasts.

Not always and everywhere, but enough.