I Choose to Believe

that what is
is what must
so I bear
because
I can

Scars (Damage)

I have got to be more careful.

I was out at dinner the other night and happened looked down at my hands, then my arms, at least what were visible below the sleeves.  I had fresh scabs and older scabs, new purple scars and fading pale ones, all over the place.

And bruises too.  Purple, blackish, blotchy ones and green and yellow ones with seemingly no rhyme or reason to where they were.  It's not like I'm getting into fist fights.

And then I saw it was the same deal with my legs, from what I could see trying to be nonchalant and discreet from the restaurant table. 

And then I casually glanced around at every one else's hands and arms.  Perfectly nice and not mangled.  Not a visible, noticeable blemish among them.  Hmmm.

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I don't notice often times when I've hurt myself.  I'll bump into something or scratch against something and then later the red or pink abrasion will catch my eye, or the trickling blood.  I won't even have registered the pain that came with whatever caused that. 

Or should have come.  I'm not sure it ever hurt.  But I'm fairly certain it did and I have trained myself to disregard it because I'm focused on whatever it is I'm doing; even if whatever it is I'm doing doesn't require steadfast attention. 

A lot of times, I don't notice clanking into things unless other people are around and say something.  The last time I lived with people, I hit a coffee table with my shin so hard that I moved it, and the only way I knew about it is that my roommate said "what the hell?" and I had to stop and say "oh" and put the table back in place.

When I'm around other people, it turns out that do that with chairs and tables and doorways fairly often.  When I'm not around other people, I think I have vague recollections of immediate pain and blurting cusswords in the moment I injure myself, but I tend to be thinking about other things.

When I have one of these moments where I notice the blood or scabs or scars, what I think about is: maybe my nerves are deadening as I age; just one more thing getting worn out? Or are my nerves absolutely fine and it's just that when I was young, pain was a novel experience so it seared into my consciousness, but now it's a drop in the bucket so why bother acknowledging it?

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Like I say, I'm not really certain if I felt the pain or not.  And that's weird, I'm pretty sure.  But I must have, because I have pain receptors.  There are other times I am a big, giant, flaming pansy when it comes to being in pain.  I sprain an ankle or somesuch and I'm not sure there are many folks who make as much of a production out of how much pain they're in.  Not proud of it; just saying. 

But with little stuff? Not sure it registers at all.  And I'm not sure why. But I need to be more careful about the little stuff. 

Because it adds up.
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There's one thing that's become really clear to me lately, but it's not a scar per se.  A couple years ago, I was dating a girl and oft-handedly said, "I've never dated a girl with freckles before."  She replied, "Oh?" And then she got a trifle defensive (because that's what she did), "Well, I mean, you have freckles."  To which I said, "Oh, no, that's sun damage, sweetheart."

As a teenager, I was a baseball player.  Hours and hours, seemingly all spring and summer, I was outside in the sun.  I didn't wear sunscreen, because I had a baseball cap on and I was a teenager, of course. 

And then I was a soldier.  I wore a patrol cap or helmet when I was out in Iraq.  I didn't have time for sunscreen. 

And then I was an adventurer and have hiked or canoed or sailed or played with helicopters in Afghanistan and always had hats or caps.  When I remembered to do it, I put on sunscreen.

I recently cut my hair short for the first time in five years, because I was going to be out sailing in abominable heat for days on end.  And I slathered on sunscreen and put on my boat hat with the wide bill.  I know to do that because I'm not getting any younger; I already have the freckly-looking sun damage around my eyes, you see.

And after the first day, I happened to look in a mirror when I wasn't wearing the hat, and I thought, "Damn! I got a sunburn on my face anyway!" Because I had a distinct tan/burn line across my forehead right at where I had been wearing my hat.  But then I realized, it wasn't a tan/burn line from wearing my hat that one time. 

It just had been very light when I hadn't been out in the sun, or I had bangs before that hadn't made it noticeable,  but now I have a line of sun damage that's visible across my forehead. When you've spent summers and years wearing hats and caps in deserts and fields, well, there you go. 

I now have a perpetual mask on. 

My forehead is fresh; my face is worn out. 

As you age, these things get revealed to you.

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What's the next thing that's going to show up? 

I saw the scabs and scars at the dinner table and wondered, "Oh, God.  Is this going to be a death by a thousand paper cuts?  Am I going to hit forty-five and be a curled-in-a-ball, gnarled husk?"

My dad doesn't have the scars like me, but he did beat himself the hell up, so to speak.  I mean, he's clearly where I got it from.  He was an army ranger and green beret (for a brief time) and he was religious about staying fit, to the point he was beating cadets on the obstacle course at the Citadel even into his fifties.

He had to replace his hips at sixty-four and he does not move well at all.  He even said a lot of it happened because all of his ligaments and tendons just froze up/hardened because he never bothered stretching when he was younger.  It happens.

I recall one story where perhaps he tried to give me a head's up as to what's going to happen. 

When he was in his late fifties, he was out on a hiking trip with former students and they asked him, "Colonel, don't lie; if you woke up one morning at twenty-five feeling how you do when you wake up at fifty-eight, you'd think you caught the flu, wouldn't you?"  He wanted to argue, but had to agree.

And he was an athlete. 

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I'm not an athlete, at least not any more. I'm just your average, ordinary, out of shape, middle aged guy.  But I have mangled myself way, way, way more than your average, ordinary, out of shape, middle aged guy. 

When all this adds up, it's going to be bad.  I'm going to look like Reverse Dorian Gray, where people will suspect that there's a painting in my attic that gets a little bit younger and little more perfect the older I get.

I need to be more careful.  But I know me and I know that's not going to happen.

What's going to happen is that I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing until I physically can't do it any more.  Because that's me.  It just is.

But I need to be more careful.

Mask of Agamemnon

Vainglorious, proud, out to avenge a sacred wrong,
With every assurance from kith and kin
That his action was not only noble but holy,
He boarded the machine burdened with death.

Within his trojan horse, he came upon their masses.
At his signal, fiery mayhem burst forth,
And, in an instant, all was laid to waste, he as well.
Heads, arms, legs, and trunks, strewn about in chunks.

Iraq is NOT Vietnam! It's actually...

Bizarro Vietnam.

Vietnam Order of Events
1. Takes over from another country; US sends in Advisors
2. US slowly escalates troop levels
3. After set-backs, vows to train up host country forces to fight
4. Reduces forces
5. Withdraws (loses war)

Iraq War Order of Events
1.  Sweeps in. Declares Victory
2.  As insurgency grows, vows to train up host country forces to fight
3.  Escalates forces (surge)
4.  Reduces forces/withdraws
5. US Sends in Advisors; considers bringing in other countries

An Open Letter to Dame Angela Lansbury

Miss Lansbury,

I think you and I need to be a thing. A romantic/sexual/bang-buds/whateveryouwannacallit kinda thing.  But after we go through a whole getting married kinda thing.  A getting-married-with-no-pre-nuptual-agreement kinda thing.

Because, you are a lady. A dame even.

And because there's no reason to mince words.

The young ladies and I? That's just not really working. 

Also not working is me.  Well, that's not true at all.   I'm the opposite of not working. I'm working too damn much. All the time really. And working doesn't work for me.  In fact, I've been relying on work, well, money, for half my life and it (work) really sucks.  I think I've given it the good old college try and it's not for me.

You know what is for me? You. And your money.

Why should I deny it?  We're both adults here. 

Wow. Just...Wow

I've been working at a personal injury law firm for the past year. We have clients all over the state. I have been doing a little bit of everything at the office: I carry cases as an attorney,  I help with organization and operations, and I sign up clients and bring them their checks at the end of their cases.

I was making a run of checks out to clients today and my last one was outside of Pinewood, South Carolina.  I was running earlier than our scheduled appointment, but most people don't mind if you show up early with money.

I pulled up to the trailer and a young black man was standing on the porch. In a thick country accent, he said, "You here for Lorenzo?

"Yup. Sure am," I replied.

"Lorenzo ain't here yet. Come on in the house."

So I followed him into the trailer. Inside, a grandmother was sitting in a comfortable chair watching a large screen TV. One of those judge TV shows was on. There were framed pictures of Martin Luther King and a black angel with white wings and there was a cross on the wall.

The unnamed young man, the brother(?), silently led me into the kitchen and sat me down at the kitchen table. He sat down in the chair next to me. The mother(?) was frying up something in the kitchen. An aunt emerged from the back bedroom and they all started chatting.

The Drift Away

Washington Reid Patrick III 1979-2014

My nails have the dirt they'll press on and around you caked underneath them. I grabbed the dirt with my bare hand. No shovel. I held it aloft and envisioned you in the iteration I knew best, the boy I joined on so very many escapades. 

And now I've borne your weight with other men who knew that boyhood form of you, and the versions of you in the times since life took you and me on separate journeys. I stood as holy men intoned, and widow and parents wept. Tears of my own welled and rolled, as I made witness to their pain.

When you and I were acolytes, peeking behind the curtain of that venerable church, where the man after whom I'm named has lain so long his headstone has been engulfed by the soil, I never considered I'd see you put to eternal rest in that same place.

I released that fist of dirt and it thudded impotently on the lid of the metal sarcophagus we'd put your coffin inside and lowered to finality. Water was welling in your grave.

Fare thee well, my friend.