Day 31

“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.”

-kurt vonnegut (bluebird)

today is halloween, the first of many holidays i am missing during my sabaticle from life (including but not limited to thanksgiving, christmas, new years, valentines day, sarahs birthday-the second in a row, the forth of july). it's almost surreal to think that these days that are normally perceived to be monumental,  will be just another day of bullet dodging and rocket calling. the vast majority of my days i have no knowledge of what the date is let alone what day of the week it is. tomorrow is the first of november, i know that because that is the one month mark of me being overseas, also the day before my birthday. how strange, i'm missing my birthday as well.
for halloween i am going to be a happy solider with no contempt for his peers or this groundless crusade i'm part of.

Day 30

a man died here today, a boy really. shot in the neck by another boy who was perhaps the same age as him. the two boys were fighting for completely different reasons, or maybe, just maybe, their motivations were so close to each other one could call them kindred. what is the justification, if any? is there any justice in the wild wild west? and while his family clings to the sight of his shape for the last time before letting him loose in the afterglow, do they curse themselves for allowing their offspring give his life for what some might consider frivolous pursuits with no clear benefits?
i stood in the space between the mountains with a line of hundreds, my head down,  hands behind my back, as the biting air assaulted my face and appendages. the sting of sand and dirty in my eyes as the helicopters came down to pick him up. and they they walked me, six men, four carrying a stretcher with an american flag draped over a motionless form. the air is still, the sounds of grown men sniffling are followed by the echos of the birds leaving to take him home. nothing follows.

i sit in a tent, with dozens of others, rehearsing as they pay homage to their fallen brother, their friend, their family. in memoriam they commemorate him. tomorrow is the real thing, but even in practice this stricts to the core of the matter just fine. i never knew this specialist, but as i watch his friends, struggling to hold back tears, as they speak to the crowd about their companion, i feel connected. i hate that i do, in fact i loathe myself for these feelings. but i can't deny the swelling in my heart or the sadness. i am connected to every long face and sad soul in this tent, and my heart feels a sense of loss. it doesn't matter if i believe in the fight that he fought, the fight that we're fighting. it doesn't matter if this war is or isn't an imperial march on a country that has nothing to do with the american dream, or her way of life. what matters is that tonight a mother will be beside herself when upon receiving the news that she no longer has a son.

Day 29

 101 screaming seagulls. everywhere. they cram in tents and clutter the dfac, extending the lines and talking shit the whole time. they appear to operate with reckless abandon, nothing about their demeanor seems safe or secure. loud and proud. the bring my internet to a halt with their downloading during peak hours of usage. they come and go by the hundreds at night, ear-piercing, they have no regard for my sleep cycle.
i can't wait until 2017

Day 28

and everything turned itself inside out and i woke up in the middle of the night with the beam of a flashlight in my face and the ear-splitting cackles of hundreds of bodies making their way into my tent; back from the dead, and early. i suppose i should be relieved, and in all honesty i am. however, i'm not really relieved about the early aspect to their arrival. i was looking forward to a couple days of peace and quiet, free from the hoots and hollers of the infantry. furthermore, downloading the complete series of rocko's modern life is now complete pipedream, the internet is destined to be clogged.

Day 27 pt. 3

i have no devotion in my heart greater than the love i have for my beloved. our passion is strained by seas and mountains and valleys. and yet we remain strong and impregnable. plagued by time and contretemps, the absence of skin grazing skins and face to face exchange would be enough to devastate most lovers. and yet my love and i remain tough and determined. my passion for her is fierce, my desires to touch her body and kiss her face keep me motivated to stay alive, stay vigilante, and keep my head on a swivel.
i want nothing more than to one day make her my bride and stare down the face of the great unknown by her side, holding her hand, squeezing it twice.
where is my love? where is my happy ending? when she dreams does she dream of our past adventures? does she see my face in the buildings and pastimes where we've shared our ? when she touches herself is it me she imagines? and when i return to her will i be what she remembered? will she still want me when my head becomes swollen with regrets and guilt? will she stand beside me when my sanity is on the brink and thoughts of madness tease me and beckon me to join their procession down the long dark road to lunacy? will she pull me from the sorrow of war and bring me into her heavenly arms, and comfort my soul, and tend to my wounds? these are the thoughts that enter my ticker and pull at my heart strings when i am away and missing her glow.
what is love? is it the pheromones, phenylethylamine, the dopamine and the oxytocin? does my brain release it's emissions causing my heart to flutter?  am i nothing more than a science experiment? or is my love my desire to be next to her until i take in my last breath? is it my longing to serve her and spoil her with affection and all the material possessions i can possibly afford to buy? is it my need to see her, to be in her, and around her? my brain has literally become rewired from bond we share. i'd like to think that it's both, the chemicals inside my head release because she is meant to be, meant for me.
there are days when everything feels alright in my heart until i look down at my hands and see the spaces in between my fingers, where her fingers fit perfectly. i to want to flood her thoughts and cover her heart. to never let her go another day without my touch, to have and to hold under death rips us apart.
my love. my life. forever.

Day 27 pt. 2

it's easier to prepare yourself mentally for battle than it is to train your mind to handle the down time. since i've been here in afghanistan i have had plenty of time on my hands. in my time here i have completed three seasons of dexter, two seasons of sons of anarchy, a season of wonder showzen, a season it's always sunny in philadelphia, two books, over twenty games of spades, forty levels of angry birds and a handful of movies. i have been here twenty-eight days. in my down time i have come up with two new slang terms that i will try to incorporate into my day-to-day jargon.

Bolo   |bō lō|                                        verb

1. to bolo
2. the act of kicking a persons neck while they are laying on the ground and smiling maliciously.
3. the act of throwing quicklime in someones eyes during a fight.

see also: boloed, boloing  
from the 1988 martial arts classic Bloodsport  


Earp    |ər p|                                                    verb

1. to earp
2. the act of slapping someone multiple times when you are clearly in the wrong.
3. the act of explaining to someone why you're slapping them while slapping them.

see also: earped, tearp, earping, post-erp
from the 1993 western classic Tombstone

Wyatt Earp: [Tyler reaches for his gun] Go ahead, skin it! Skin that smokewagon and see what happens...
Johnny Tyler: [pauses, scared] M-mister, I'm gettin' tired of your...
Wyatt Earp: [slaps Tyler across the face, unafraid] I'm gettin' tired of all your gas, now jerk that pistol and go to work!
Wyatt Earp: [slaps him harder, now completely steely-eyed] I said throw down, boy!

Day 27

be still my racing mind, let me sleep.
if you only knew the pain you've been putting me through, you might slow yourself down, catch your breath, and rest next to my weathered body. i have been tossing and turning in my bed placed in the corner of my tent; like a sad military march, left, right, left, right, keep in step. I can hear the low roar of corporal west's snores. in like a storm and out like a hurricane. they vibrate my bed as i shift my weight from my right back onto my left.
i can't sleep, sleep is after all the cousin of death; a relative i am not looking forward to meet anytime soon. so i keep my eyes wide open, fixated on the wave like ripples in tent above my head.
it's in this moment, with west's nightly roars that i realize that i'm sleeping amongst lions, trained killers, and mad men. i don't feel like one of them, and yet they accept me into their pride. do they not see my heart on my sleeve, the zipper on my back revealing my white wool? i am a fraud. i want nothing of war or courage. i want nothing of stories and combat. surely they must know this is a costume i put on daily and an act i've been rehearsing frequently with such urgency. are they really that blind to common sense and signals? perhaps, secretly they know my deceit and still allow me to stay. maybe they feel that lions are not sanctified unless pictured beside a lamb. does my presence make them feel like they are not what they clearly are? are we all trading something here? a piece of me for a piece of them.
i feel like at any moment i will reach behind my back to pull this costume from my body, to reveal to my brothers in arms that i am nothing like them, but the zipper will no longer be there, gone, or missing, who knows. i will be one of them. something to be damned. but who should be damned to die? who stands on stilts above all and condemns man? what is wrong can be right, and so the righteous can just as easily be in the wrong. evil is a word and words are only as good as their meanings, but meanings are subjective and can be swayed and twisted to suit the desires of anyone.
am i evil? what have i become? am i a thug, a hired gun sent to fight, not to think or reason or feel but rather to do? am i a mere vessel used to hurt innocent people for the betterment of progress, government, industry, and the need to seek and destroy that which we do not understand? i see more contractors than i do soldiers, i see more long faces then i see smiles. are we saving anyone or simply burying ourselves in self righteous nationalism?
we could be doing so much better if not for the talking heads and hands in back pockets, the smiling faces with their diamond eyes, oily skin, and dollar sign teeth.
and the world doesnt care, we the people sleep so soundly, safe in the knowledge that lions roam and do the bidding of the rats, vultures, and thieves; while the third world gasps for breathes as it's stomach wrenches with hunger pains.

Day 26 pt. 2

today while smoking a cigarette and reading outside my tent, my eyes caught a tall afghan man walking past my peripheral. as i scanned this giant coming my way i noticed his feet were bandaged and bleeding; every step he took made me wince; the thought of bleeding steps in shabby sandals on rocks was almost to much for me to bare. the bottoms of his feet were so red and bruised that the gray sandals had followed suit, taking on the scarlet coloration.  i looked at his face expecting to see some sort of suffering in his tired eyes. none. he walked with a sense of purpose, tall, and confident. the pain of each step was so hidden behind this mans leathery exterior that one could say it wasn't even there at all. this old man was made of stone.
as he walked by all i could think about was clint eastwood, syl stallone, and all the other soft individuals who are paid handsomely to portray rough men.
then it hit me: fuck john wayne, i want to be like the tall afghan man with bleeding feet.

Day 26

“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
 -Mahatma Gandhi

this isn't really for you. however, if somehow you stumble upon it, it really doesn't matter to me. If i wanted it completely hidden from the public i would lock this site, or better yet write my thoughts on paper. this is exercise for me, simply to keep my mind sharp and perhaps to hone in on my thoughts for the next year. conceivably, if and when i return to my life in the States and i feel myself slip away into paranoia, alcoholism, and all the traps that men who have supped the horrors of war get bottled into, this will at the very least be act as reference point or a time line. Hopefully in doing this i can prevent the aforementioned deficiencies and come out of this event better than i was before, in mind, body and in spirit.
the air is thin here and it gets hard to breathe at night when i look out my tent and am greeted by the clearest view of the milky way one could imagine, more stars than my heart can handle. shooting like missiles across the dark sky, meteors dissolve before ever getting a chance to show it's shape or size.
my memory stream will become tainted the longer i'm here, the more time i sit in the cold mountains, listening to the thunder of rockets and the clicks and clatters of rounds being expended. who will i become over time? will i recognize my own thoughts? will i sound like some paranoid maniac? afraid of my own shadow? will my loves no longer be my loves?
the jitters. the shakes. the night terrors. the daymares. crowd fear. spine cramps. black outs. head tremors. eye splinters. vision quests. one day these could be a few of my favorite things.
 i am no fool, i'm hip to what is kept safe and dry under post traumatic stress umbrella.  i want my arms, i want my legs, i want my soul, and i want my mind. whatever it takes to keep me whole. this cold part of the world is trying to bend me until i break under the weight and pressure. hopefully i can keep my head above the water.

the push ups are for my arms.
this is for my heart.
here's to hoping.