Sunday, January 9, 2011

May all your sins be small...

Of course, any sin is never small, not really. If you throw an egg at an old man on a bicycle it isn't a good thing, if it isn't good why are you doing it and since you know it isn't good why do you think it is better than a hand grenade? I wonder why we measure and record all that stuff in life, do you think the lion says well this is my fourteenth impala, with Crocket and Boone measurements? See how smart the lion is? He gets more game than you ever will, and when he doesn't - life is not good.

I am making a smaller footprint in the home again, I was discouraged from shaving in our bathroom, since we were going to church and had foolishly turned on the television to hear that calling a boy "gay" was bullying. I have one nasty signature in a school yearbook (1962) from Scott Ross, of Ligonier Pennsylvania. I read what he wrote, closed the book and didn't have anyone else sign it that year. I am sure looking back at it now, he didn't mean well, he didn't want to fight and that he doesn't know it bothered me because I ignored it forever - just let it fester inside my relationship with that boy... Anyway, I grabbed my shaving mug and razor and went into the other bathroom to cut myself well - I am taking blood thinners and don't stop bleeding like I once did.

Dressed for church, luckily I do have suits to wear that are extra large from times before when German Bakeries were my favorite temptation to give into. I put the pistol inside the waist band, left the extra magazine at home. If I have to use a pistol I will probably only fire two bullets, my first line of defense is always twenty feet of packed dirt, stone wall, or reinforced concrete. Pistols are not defensive and I know that the willingness to fight or shoot doesn't discourage really good fighters - they just look on it like big rounds coming in from a battleship, part of the cost of doing business in a war zone. When people are trying to kill you it is now officially a war zone. After the battle is over, the investigators will show up to reason it out, cover it up, speak platitudes and entertain those that weren't there. Oh, I forgot to mention the sponsors of the news program for making sure we can have a better life and such.

I am still reading about Okinawa in WWII and New York in the Revolutionary War, thinking about all the War movies and books written - few of them ever get to what really is going on, as I sit here with dry clothes, clean body, well fed (too well fed, thank you), rested reading and getting my memories jostled - hmm, those were strange dreams last night. I once thought that Apocolypse Now was a very well crafted examination of the WAR in Vietnam - but what I really needed was a film about the people that went to the movie and ate popcorn. Too much of my life is centered around carefully crafted professional entertainment, hundreds of years ago the best poets, writers and entertainers were passing miracles - most people entertained themselves and their friends at corn shuckings, harvest time and barn raising. We celebrated life instead of lifestyles. But then maybe we didn't believe that Science, Medicine and Law Enforcement were going to always save us, we had bad teeth, scars and broken bones. Painted ladies weren't known for being virtuous.

I had forgotten about the Coffee Shop girls in Korea - I knew about them, kind of, in my first tour there, but by the second tour I was well above and far away from them and only a recent Korean Soap Opera reminded me about them. They aren't as easy as a Western mind might think. They talk to customers as individuals and the talking over a cup of coffee is the whole gig. I think in America the shrink is providing the same service and unless you are named Soprano your shrink won't look as good as the coffee shop girls. But when the work is tough, the family doesn't understand, no one has time for you to be vulnerable or worried - the coffee shop girl has the time, the patience and the skill to make you feel like a hero again so you can face the world. Oh, well, we get the internet and facebook friends so why would we need the smile of a pretty girl and a little attention with the coffee?

My mother is still sick, in and out of the hospital back to the nursing home, not sick enough for the full time hospital but not really well enough to talk over the telephone or Skype. My sister is there and helping helplessly - one can't do much except the best one can, and the person suffering may never know how much you did or do, but always thank you - Caregivers everywhere, professional or loving amateurs thank you for giving so much care and love, sometimes it is all that matters.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

"We celebrated life instead of lifestyles." Excellent point Earl, and we still do... We are, I believe, comfortable in our own lives, much more so than the current generations!