I am starting to like Proust, I never thought this day would come. When the program first started, reading Swann’s Way, I believed I would love the novel becuase of the praise it has recieved over the years. While reading Swann’s Way, I started to hate the discriptions Proust used to describe Combray and his use of 10 page’s to describe one flower. This past week we had a guest speaker that really showed me the way to follow Proust. Patrick, our guest speaker interpreted Proust and his writing in a positive way and he allowed me to view the characters within In Search of Lost Time, in such a way that I have not before. Before venturing into Proust’s six volume set, I had the state of mind that becuase I love the works of Hemingway and Steinbeck that I would automatically love the work of Proust; I was wrong. While talking to Patrick he opened my eyes to the way Proust uses his personal life in the same why that Hemingway and Steinbeck.

One of the main reasons I love Hemingway was becuase he took his personal life and twisted it into a way that his novels followed his life. I love the way Hemingway portray’s his feelings and put them into the words that made up his novels. When I starting reading Proust, I believed he was nothing like this but then as I finished Swann’s Way and began Within a Budding Grove, Patrick helped me see that Proust, in his own way, is similar to Hemingway and his writing style. Proust took his personal life and his feelings and put them into his novels. This is what I love and what I am looking for. When I finally finished Swann’s Way I was realieved but then I felt a sense of relief when I started reading Volume II because it was finally what I had been looking for when reading Proust.

While continuing to read In Search of Lost Time, I am finding that I’m starting to understand why Proust uses the specific diction and phrases he does. I hope to continue to enjoy and question Proust in everything he does.

Proust, A Budding Grove:

“Momentarily eclipsed, my past no longer projected before me that shadow of itself which we call our future; placing the goal of my life no longer in the realization of the dreams of the past, but in the felicity of the present moment, I could see no further than it” (p. 539).

This passage is in the midst of a couple pages of musings of our narrator on the state of being inebriated.  He speaks on the fact that when he is in this state, he exists in the present moment.  This is in sharp contrast to who he is the rest of the time, which the reader sees illustrated is that of someone who is fixated on past events.  Even girls whom he passes in the train, as he’s witnessing them in the present, are quickly flown back to the past as he rushes past their faces.

This passage also reminds me of the wisdom told to me by an old voice lesson teacher.  She gave the metaphor of life being a book.  The person is on whatever page, and everything before that is the past and is filled in.  Everything in front of that page is the future and is blank.  But, not knowing what is to be filled in there, and knowing what has come before, the person unknowingly makes the mistake of transposing the past onto the future.  Copying and pasting.  The narrator seems to be making the same mistake, stating, “my past no longer projected before me that shadow of itself which we call our future.”  Behavioral and thought patterns may be built upon our experiences thus far, but that does not mean that they need create our future.  What has happened up to this page will have an influence, as it is one book, but to repeat the same happenings again would be unnecessary and redundant.

This moment and many others in this novel remind me of an oracle card named “Ghostlands.”  This card is a warning against nostalgia and longing.  It is about the fact that the future is groundless, that is has no solid substance, and that the past may be nice to remember but that it’s gone forever.  Neither one is livable.  By living there one loses his footing in the present, which is the best place that he can be.  This seems to be especially missed by M.  He is stuck in daydreams about what may someday be, which rarely matches up with reality (think Mme.Guermante).  He is also stuck in his memories (think this whole book).  While he is intoxicated he is somehow able to break out of this fantasy world, describing this rare experience of the present as felicitous. This feeling of intense happiness is in direct contrast to the grieving, insecure, sadness that seems to permeate the rest of his existence (which is in past/future).  On the ride home he urges his driver to travel quickly, not yet willing to slide back into his normal operating function of living entirely out of the moment.  How much would things change for M. if he was able to bring this presentness of his intoxication into his everyday reality? I expect that the blank part of his book would start to look differently that the already written sections.  I think that the writing would also be less repetitive and perhaps M. less obsessive.  But would we even have a book then?

After lecture on Monday, I found myself wondering about storytelling, and if it is in fact a lost form. How rare it is to find ourselves sitting around campfires telling the tales of our forefather’s great victories and also of their debilitating defeats. No longer do we warn of, as per the Basso text, the coyote that may or may not be pissing up stream or the grasshoppers that could decimate our crops[1]; the stories that were once told offered advice and guidance to the young, as well as a form of entertainment. But is Benjamin right? Is storytelling really a lost art?

My family does not have many great stories. My mother has on occasion spoken of her grandparents and the great-depression – life in the dust-bowl. She has shared stories with me of her impoverished childhood, her parents moving her from town to town in hopes of finding work, and the small drawer that she was allowed to keep her belongings in the minuscule mobile-trailer in which they called home. Perhaps she told me in an attempt to instill a desire to better myself through education and hard work?

I have been told stories of time spent in Hawaii when I was a child. My father and mother would drive into coconut groves, my mother would leap out of the car with the speed and precision of a lynx, and grab a coconut or two, completely ignoring the posted signs warning of potential death due to the coconuts falling from above. Perhaps she told me this story to simply keep me from getting killed by a falling coconut?

And then I find myself thinking about the stories that I give value to. I have shared on many occasions the story of my younger sister getting ran over by a van when we were young children. My memory is blurry but the consequence of not paying attention, by myself, the driver of the van, and my sister, resulted in her being injured. Maybe I tell the story because it was traumatic. Maybe I tell it so that others, in their future, pay attention.

Pay attention.

It was while driving home from the dentist today that I realized – I was paying attention – that I spend a good portion of my day listening to stories, as do majority of the American people. It is piped in at the dentist’s office and grocery store. It is in our earbuds and on the car stereo. It is in every restaurant we dine and practically everywhere we go. It was right there with me, on that drive, as I flipped through the stations.  Music.

Benjamin stated in the beginning of his essay on the works of Nikolai Leskov that, “…the storyteller in his living immediacy is by no means a present force. He has already become something remote from us and something that is getting more distant…” and later, “the art of storytelling is coming to an end.”[2]

In 1969, in reaction to the Vietnam War, John Fogerty wrote a song for his band at the time – Creedence Clearwater Revival – entitled Fortunate Son[3]. The song, the musical story, tells of the class struggle taking place during a time of civil unrest, a time of wars being perpetuated by the rich but fought by the poor[4].

Some folks are born, made to wave the flag
Ooo, their red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief”
Ooo, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no

Some folks are born, silver spoon in hand
Lord, don’t they help themselves, y’all
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yeah

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no, no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no

Yeah, yeah
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask ‘em, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer “More! More! More!”, y’all

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no military son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, one
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no, no, no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son, no, no, no[5]

Fogerty is telling a story, a story that I have heard many times over. I know the story behind the song not only through the words themselves, but from the conversations I have had about them. But Fogerty is only one example of many. The more I think about songs that have left a lasting memory, that tell a story that may be politically motivated, a testament to a social change (Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young also delved into the Vietnam War and the shooting of four student protesters in Ohio), a declaration for peace (John Lennon, Imagine), or perhaps one of many, many anthems for those mending a broken heart (Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive). Seriously, think about some songs that stick out to you and what they mean.

It is hard to know what exactly defines a story, which we discussed in Stacey’s seminar on Monday as well. I imagine music does not fit the parameters as discussed by Benjamin but it seems that music now is an example of how stories can be told and retold. Musicians are the evolution of the storytellers of the past?

I also want to clarify that not all musicians are good storytellers; I am not interested in the wisdom of Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber, but I do believe that there is something to be said for the story in a song.

[1] Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

[2] Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.

[3] Grow, Kory. “John Fogerty Addresses ‘Fortunate Son’ Concert for Valor Controversy.” Rolling Stone. November 13, 2014. Accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-fogerty-addresses-fortunate-son-concert-for-valor-controversy-20141113.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Retrieved from: http://www.metrolyrics.com/fortunate-son-lyrics-creedence-clearwater-revival.html

There I was just riding along in the car, not thinking of much, and watching the clouds above slowly roll away. From my lap I felt a small but alarming vibration, I looked down to see his his name in message form. When I opened my phone and pressed the small envelope button the message “can’t wait till you get home! I love you now and forever!” flashed across the screen. I smiled and wrote back “Forever Indeed babers.” Turning back to the window I couldn’t help but feel excited for the future that laid ahead. The road I was on took me to a far away place 3 states away from him, my friend and I ventured through the city for 4 days before returning home to Washington. Once my daughter and I arrived home, my significant other made sure to spend as much time with us as possible before heading off to work every night and staying there until the early morning hours. Then the time came. He told me I needed to find a babysitter and he would meet me at our house, He wanted me to wear something nice and he wanted me all to himself. I listened to Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton while I got ready for this date. I had chosen a red dress that clung to my frame and stopped above my knee with a sweetheart neck line and glitter top, sterling silver tear drop neckless with matching earings and a brand new pair of red high heals. After curling my air and adding a spritz of perfume I was ready to go. He came up the stairs and tried to open the door. I stopped him. I asked him to go sit in the room and I would be right there. After listening for the bedroom door to open and shut I walked out and into the room. He was rubbing our dog’s head and pushing him around trying to get him wriled up before he caught site of me. I looked down at him and before I could open my mouth, his eyes met mine and his mouth dropped open. He told me I looked beautiful and smiled. I smiled and said thank you I hope I don’t look to silly and he said not at all. We arrived to the restaurant Riccardo’s, the same restaurant he had taken me too 3 years prior for our first date. We sat, smiled and looked at the menu to order. While we reminisced about our previous experiences and what are previous orders had been, I couldnt help but get excited because I knew that this was the night I had been waiting for, this was the night he was going to ask me to be Mrs. Neubaur. I think he saw my excitement because he kept asking me why am I so excited. I would just smile and tell him because this is a special night right and he would just shrug the question off and look across the room trying not to smile. After devouring ribbon pasta covered in clams, shrimp and white cream alfredo and his roast duck and scalloped raviolies, I knew the time had come, making little conversation I kept thinking about the ring and the expressions on the faces of people that were seating across and behind us. still nothing. Then the plates are cleared, the desert is in front and still nothing. Thinking that it must be any moment I felt on edge and excited but uncomfortable, was I wrong? is this just dinner? I kept thinking, After some more light conversation, wes tells me he forgot his wallet in the truck and he would be back. I waiting now thinking that yes this is def the time, but he returned paid the waiter and still nothing? So now walking out under the moon and the stars I knew this was it and….nothing…so with my disappointed demenour I got into the truck and tried to just be thankful for dinner and not sulk. We arrived at our house and we went inside. I automatically went to fix a blanket that was in desarray and as soon as I leaned back up I had hands wrap around me and a beautiful ring right in front of my nose. Well are you ready to get married or what babe? This was the best surprise.

During Patrick McMahon’s close reading with the class a lot of in depth and critical ideas were brought up in relation to the text of Within A Budding Grove. In light of this I want to explore the pages of 514-515, a piece which I see as one of Proust’s confession’s.

On page 514 after continuing his meanderings about the “mean girls” strutting through town, Proust writes “All the advantages which, in our ordinary environment, extend and enhance us, we there find to have become invisible, in fact eliminated; while on the other hand the people whom we suppose, without reason, to enjoy similar advantages appear to us amplified to artificial dimensions”. The narrator (or Proust), is suggesting that those whom he judges so harshly share the same advantages, namely intellectual, that he has, thus I suppose justifying his judgments.Then, he says, those who share these advantages of his, appear to him “amplified to artificial dimensions”.

There is no doubt that with many characters, Proust does just this: amplifies them to artificial dimensions. In fact, in the previous passage about the “mean girls”, Proust spends pages, building up these girls into artificial caricatures. They are “birds”, an “exclusive gang”, “noble and calm models of human beauty that I beheld”, with their “bold, hard and frivolous natures”. He slings all sorts of contrasting descriptions and attributes upon them in the span of a seconds and the nature of their true character, we will never know, because it is left in the wreckage. As the narrator explains “I had dealt them like cards into so many heaps to compose” (508). He deals quickly and without care and before the reader knows it, we are on to the next topic, broken by the many harsh and beautiful ideas of the characters just described.

In the next paragraph (514-515) he continues “As I had so often thought when Mme de Villeparisis’s carriage bore me away, that at closer quarters, if I had stopped for a moment, certain details, a pock-marked skin, a flaw in the nostrils, a gawping expression, a grimace of a smile, an ugly figure, might have been substituted, in the face and body of the woman for those that I doubtless imagined; for no more than a pretty outline, the glimpse of a fresh complexion, had sufficed for me to add, in entire good faith, a ravishing shoulder, a delicious glance of which I carried in my mind for ever a memory or a preconceived idea“.

Here he is stating outright, that one glance and one feature of a person allows him to create a whole caricature from his imagination. The narrator already has a wealth of preconceived ideas in his head and when he observes one of these girls, he has taken his ideas, whether beautiful or grotesque and in seconds has a spun a whole creature together which he then presents to us.

Most Sundays were tournament days, a “break time” for my mom, and so I was still able to go watch my Dad and brother compete. My best friend, Stephanie, went with us to keep me out of trouble. At first we behaved properly and sat quietly on the side, cheering in our subdued voices, trying hard not to be noticed. I shared my letters from Rusty about her adventures in Judo and how she was working hard to allow us to compete. She described training hard and talked about other, grown women she was teaching.

Sitting on the side of the mat, we always seemed to be under the watch of one of the Senseis and were often told to, “be quiet, watch, and maybe learn something.”   Stephanie and I watched the matches closely and talked more about how the tournament was held and the way it was refereed than the judo taking place during the match, although we noticed some of that also. We paid attention to how the officials acted and how the points were scored. We explored the buildings and walked outside whenever we could. One location was especially tempting for us. The tournament took place on the mats in the main training area; we had found a room upstairs that was full of mats, unused and out of the sight of the tournament officials. They hosted tournaments here once a month.

It wasn’t long before we snuck our uniforms into the car so we had them at the tournament. We had noticed other girls sitting on the sidelines, and quietly asked if they did judo and if they wanted to try to have a girl’s only tournament, in secret. There were only 5 or 6 and they all wanted to give it a try. We set a date and everyone brought their uniforms. At our agreed upon time, we all snuck away and went to the room upstairs; taking turns being the “Referee” we held our tournament. Everyone fought everyone. We paired up, and had fun. The goal wasn’t to see who was the best or who could beat who, it was to see if we could fight like the boys. We discovered that we could, even if we were girls.

The next few tournaments, we made our plans, and more and more girls joined us. When one of the Senseis or parents asked where we were going, we said that we found a quiet place to play upstairs and we would stay out of their way. By the 5^th or 6^th secret tournament we had 15 or so girls playing with us. We were discovering that we could fight just like the boys, we could do the throws that we were forbidden to learn, because they were not lady-like. We studied the tournament rules and tried to apply them. We also discovered that we could be “Officials” and act like we were in charge and knew everything. We learned how powerful we could feel when we weren’t restricted because we were just girls.

One of the most important rituals of our secret tournaments was sharing information we found about women in judo in other parts of the country. I shared my letters from Rusty. Other girls shared letters or newspaper articles. Several of us were privileged to travel to National level tournaments with our families and made startling discoveries there. We developed a network of young judo girls throughout the country that helped us know that things were changing. Of course, not fast enough for us.

In England, British women were competing against each other in sanctioned tournaments. They had modified rules for competition where gentleness and the aesthetic execution of techniques were more valued than the decisive ones. Aggression and true competition was discouraged and non-resistant, cooperative judo encouraged. The tournaments were held in separate rooms with the windows draped so no spectators could see the matches, to protect the modesty of the women.

In the Eastern United States, Women were holding Non-Tournaments. These had adults participating and were not held in secret. Because they were not really tournaments, they couldn’t really have medals or trophies. So the winners received tea cups or decorative knives, aprons and feminine trinkets. It didn’t matter what was awarded, it was the opportunity to compete that drew the women to these non-tournaments with their non-awards. They were un-sanctioned and un-approved and the men of Judo and the AAU fought against them. But yet, women continued to show up and participation grew.

We managed to keep our tournaments secret for much longer than we thought possible. One day we were discovered. One of the girls had gotten hurt. Arm locks were forbidden in the non-black belt divisions of the official, male tournaments. We allowed them in ours, since after all everything was forbidden to us. This time our inexperience worked against us. One of the competitors caught her opponent in an arm lock and the unofficial referee didn’t understand what was happening. The player’s elbow was dislocated and we had to take her down to see the doctor.

I think the Senseis knew we were up to something when we all came down in our uniforms and headed to the doctor. The tournament matches were stopped and they all went into the meeting room along with the 3 oldest girls. The rest of us sat in quiet terror, in a kneeling position on the mat close to the edge. We knew we would all be punished. An hour passed and we were having trouble staying still. The competitors were trying to stay warm and we could hear them talking about what we had done. The spectators milled around wondering when the tournament would start again.

Then one by one, the Senseis came out of the meeting room and asked everyone to clear the mats, except us girls. The head Sensei addressed the crowd and explained that we had been holding our own tournaments upstairs and that due to our inexperience and lack of supervision, one of us had been hurt. The reluctant solution that they had come to, was to allow us to compete in the tournament against the boys. We each also had to demonstrate a Kata (formal demonstration of techniques) at the beginning of each tournament and take a test about judo history. They took responsibility for not supervising us and we received no punishment. It was an unexpected and terrifying outcome. And completely against the AAU sanction rules.

Unknown to us, a small, very quiet Japanese woman was a guest at the tournament. Her name was already known to some of us, but none of the girls had met her. She was Ms. Keiko Fukuda, the highest ranking woman in the history of judo.

In retrospect it seems near impossible to explain the fear I had of this particular sound. It confuses me why I never thought of it being an alarm clock, and I question now if that’s even what the sound was. I also wonder why the sound was never stopped, because it would play through various times in the middle of the night. Its first introduction to me was during a dream, in my childhood, in which I woke up crying and crawled to the corner of my room, fearful of moving and waiting until the sun came up. I spent a lot of my childhood on the floor, and continued this habit until my mid-teens. It became my safe spot, that furry, charcoal gray and black carpeted floor made in the early 90’s.

I would sneak into the living room in the middle of the night, after being awakened from this sound, and peek through the slits of the blinds, trying to stealthily unveil the source of evil emanating from this bleating, nightmarish rhythm. Just across the street was a streetlight, and its light shone heavily on the side of the house I slept in. Deep in my gut, I felt as if this sound was bellowing from the darkest parts of the night, fixating on torturing my sleep and introducing anxiety into my life.

As best as I could, I blocked all lights which imposed on my peripheral field of view in my youth, and silenced any noise which held an irregular spot in my listening. I would tape the red digits of the phone receiver, slide my blinds to cover the streetlight, unplug my grandpa’s freezer in the middle of the night spoiling hundreds of dollars of meat, grind my teeth listening to people chew, and ensure no light was visible during a movie. I think it’s obvious to look at these odd behaviors of my childhood and correlate them to the years of struggles I’ve had with sleeping.

When I was around 16 and living with friends and girlfriends, I always had to have a movie playing before I fell asleep. Silence and blackness terrified me, and I’d focus on the ringing in my ears so intensely that no amount of exhaustion would succumb to slumber. I’d go through phases of movies, and their playback loops of the DVD menu would be ingrained in my head. If I awoke early, but was too sleepy to turn the T.V. off, I’d fall asleep again and that loop would be incorporated into my dreams. It’s not hard to recall the Harry Potter and Shrek DVD menus to this day. It’s during this phase my sleep phobia was its worst. I’d catch myself in the cusp of sleep’s grasp and a jolt of fear would surge through me as I thought I was dying. This incorporation of death and sleep began hard to shake off for years.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the narrator in Proust’s “Search”, and I can’t help but feel linked to those moments in the bedroom where sleep becomes a giant in the corner. It’s funny how much you can remember of your past in reading someone else’s words, and in what arrangement words can be put so as to unlock the doors of memory. In a way it brings some relief knowing I’m not the only one who fears an absolutely necessary component of human functioning.

I love music. I love to listen to music, to play music, to read about music. Oftentimes, I surround myself with music so much that I forget that it’s such a huge part of my life. Recently, I’ve been taking surveys online, for both my enjoyment and to make a small sum of money and oftentimes these surveys ask similar questions. Questions like: “How many times to you shop for groceries in a month?” or “How many video game consoles do you own?”. One question seems to come up more often then not goes like this: “How many hours a week do you spend listening to music?”.

I’m never able to give a truly accurate answer to this question, not one nearly as accurate as how many trips I take to the grocery store in a month at least (it’s two). After being presented with the question several times and responding inconsistently with answers ranging from “8 hours” to “around 20?” I decided to actually measure my time spent listening to music and my hour count was a bit surprising. It turns out that I listen to around 55 hours of music a week (at least for the week that I measured it). I’m sure this data would be far more accurate if I averaged it with other weeks of recorded time listening and if my measurement were exact (I mostly rounded up or down the minutes to 5 minute intervals) but I feel like it’s in the ballpark of how much time I usually spend listening to a tune in the background somewhere.

After realizing that I spend over two days of my 7-days-in-a-week life cycle listening to roughly 100 or so artists on my iPod and (seldom) on the radio I started to think about when and why I spent so much time doing this. It’s not like I spent all these hours only listening to music. In fact, a part from listening to calming music every once in a while at night to fall asleep, I rarely just sat down to listen to music. The one exception being the hour I gave to listen through Sufjan Steven‘s new album Carrie & Lowell, which had just released several days prior to my experiment. Overall, I spent most of my time (around 35 hours of it) listening to music on the way to school, from school, or during work (I spend my weekends delivering pizzas to the friendly folk of Northeast Tacoma). I asked myself why I listened to music so much in the car, instead of listening to the outside world or just basking in the silence of being alone and at work. Habit, is my guess. I do love music but more so I love comfort and having the freedom to choose specifically what I want to hear during the course of my day is a very comfortable thing to do that, after a while, just becomes my usual response to sitting in a car and driving somewhere. While I love music, I felt like I was missing out on being present in the world and have decided to roll my window down and listen to what is outside every once in a while. I feel like that can be music too, in a cheesy what is life sort of way, and I want to see how a release from that part of technology effects my feelings.

I’m sure that I have many other habits and hobbies that take up more time that I think that they do and ,though I don’t know what they are yet, I intend to find out.

– Austin

Arriving at the Vicenza airport 4 years after my first landing there, I recalled my initial fantasies of what the future would hold and compared them with the reality. The initial fantasies were unmet, but the reality was an unexpected journey that changed my life irrevocably in both good and bad ways. What I thought about when getting off that bus to fly home to Seattle was the friends I’d lost, that feeling of depression when great times come to an end, the nights downtown, the beautiful cities, and that I’d bury my involvement with the military as much as possible, taking it as but one experience and moving on. In watching most of The Sorrow and The Pity, a lot of recollections of my year in Afghanistan surfaced, coupled with other memories, and in thinking of writing these journal entries, I decided to bring up some of those memories for this class reluctantly.

When we landed in Afghanistan, the surrounding mountains and environment gave me what I retroactively can now call the most sublime (Kantian) moment in my life. We were all waiting for these supposed mortar attacks anxiously, for that moment we would no longer be cherries. A few days days later, two of my best friends died, and about 7 people were wounded, some severely. We stayed with the bodies over 12 hours to ensure they got back to the base, being shot at multiple times. When the explosives unit came, they showed us the footprints we’d made, crossing over a dozen bombs. It was like stepping in the one empty box in a  full 10×10 minesweeper game. I think about those footprints of mine often, and Salazar who was lying on one for about half an hour. A couple of people were shot those final moments before we finally managed to clean the place up. In the ride back to base I’d laid on someone’s leg wound on accident, in which he laughed and said “do you mind?” Moments before that my buddy Espinoza and I had machine gun rounds snap inches in-between our heads, scrambling in the dust trying to find cover behind the tires. It was pretty funny and terrifying, because I’d said we were going to get shot sitting like that just moments before. The reason I bring some of these moments up is that the group of 30 we’d come with had dwindled to less than 20 and we’d come closer than ever before since the 2 years we’d been together. The one person in charge of us turned out to be a coward which surprise us all greatly, and reminded me of the French who took the German’s side in France during World War II.

I understand that fear he probably was wrenched with, because he’d been blown up hours before and thrown meters away, and had to endure losing one of his soldier’s days within arriving. We had expected him to be courageous, to be that figure to hold our hands, but he abandoned us in despair, and I can’t possibly be mad. You can never gauge what a person will be like during moments of extreme stress, no matter what pre-established notions you have of them. It’s odd seeing someone so built and buff scramble around so afraid during a firefight.

The one thing I didn’t realize before joining the military, was the love these old veterans had for us young cherries. During those initial months in Afghanistan I realized how much I hated war, and how pointless being there was. I already had a semi-disgust for the military, but this cemented a deeper hate for those higher unknown powers at work in decisions for America. I am anti-war to this day, but in some sick way I’m glad I got to experience war firsthand. The reason I joined really fell on a love that fell apart which lasted a few years and my desire to go out in a bang. Rarely I came across people who actually wanted to be in the military, and if they did, they were almost always really, really patriotic. What also struck me was the intelligence most of these people I lived with had. Most weren’t academically smart, but had a high degree of street smarts. My branch of occupation was typically considered for the dumbest of the military, but a lack of intelligence and common sense would have gotten you move quickly.

Once you deploy and then come home, you come across the cherries back at home who missed the deployment, and you see that innocence in their eyes and long for it. All you care about in training them is to make sure they’re  going to get the chance to also come home when it’s their turn to deploy. The burden lies heavy when you lose someone in your platoon, and is a constant, daily reminder.

Our leader rarely if ever went out on missions with us, and we never got replacements, having to do the full deployment with triple the amount of normal missions tasked out to each individual. He was one of the strongest (physically) person I’ve ever met. He won multiple wrestling tournaments and was an instructor at a prestigious combat school. We thought he’d be this badass dude that was going to protect us, but he spent most of the deployment in the gym. My squad leader was an Iraq vet, tiny and skinny, and smoked a pack a day. The first firefight I was in, our platoon send the 6 of us out to deal with it, being the golden squad of the platoon. It started with them shooting at us in their dried up river bed systems-wadis. Our platoon set up an L, and we went out the side, and crossed this small empty field. They started laying into us with machine guns, less than 150 meters away. I remember using blades of grass as cover, and firing my machine gun, feeling so proud that I was protecting my 5 squad mates as they had to retreat, running their asses off in the extreme heat. This skinny guy didn’t give a fuck, and had no break in clarity, while I was scrambling and disoriented. It took a few weeks to get the fighting down and not lose vision. Fighting in Afghanistan is hell. Not only do we carry hundreds of pounds of equipment, but we’re facing people wearing rags and familiar with the territory, able to blend in quickly with the locals. I don’t know if I killed anyone, but it gave me a shell shock feeling knowing friends with multiple kill counts. I asked myself why we were there daily, always wondering if I should just put up with the penalty of not fighting anymore. The punishments of abandoning your duty during a deployment is extremely severe. I decided to make it through, if only to do what I could to keep what little people we had left alive.

When we had the ceremony for the two that died, days into our deployment, while saluting the portraits of the fallen, a staff sergeant from another platoon yelled “Wombats” at the top of his voice (Wombats being our platoon name). I normally cringe at anything military related-wearing dog tags, salutes, marching, cadences etc.-but this yell was the most beautiful, tragic, and heart wrenching sound I’d ever heard in my life. Being a Wombat was something that had deep roots in our brigade, memories you hear while being smoked for hours down “the hallway”. If there’s any one strong moment in which post memory resonates for me, it’s the feeling of walking down those barracks hallways, recollecting the memories handed down to me-“this person died, this person went to Legion Co., that used to be my old room.” We had a creed that went, “pork chop pork chop, greasy greasy, beat that team, fucking easy easy, Gooooooo Wombats.” It’s from 3000 Miles To Graceland, and it was the weirdest shit ever. Whenever someone died on the base in Afghanistan, you would hear Taps being played, and salute the helicopter flying away with the body. I remember someone died a day before he was to fly home. The day our 2 friends died, we heard Taps over and over and over. During the summer, that song feels like it is endlessly playing. I remember thinking there was no point in believing I was going to come home, and the fear of death actually left me until I came home from Afghanistan. I remember rolling that phrase, “the fear” and “I lost the fear,” off my tongue all during the deployment. Once you lose the fear, you become comfortable there in its simplicity and seeing dead bodies doesn’t strike you as hard. The routine is just like any other place, except you don’t worry about bills, rent and debts.

A few days after the Wombats yell, I’d survived a near atomic explosion. They said it was the biggest vehicle suicide in the history of the war. It turns out that the semi carrying these explosives was turned around at my checkpoint, and decided to go around the wall and blow up at the side. I remember looking at the vehicle x-ray machine and then suddenly being hit by a massive shockwave. Everything went black and I reached my hand up to make sure my buddy Espinoza’s top half was still there. He crawled down the hatch and we asked each other if we were okay. We got on top of the vehicle and looked at the mushroom cloud next to us, amazed. There were tents everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The debris was as far as the eye can see. It killed a ton of people, but I never saw them, and we left that base a few days later to go to another base. Flying away I was struck with a hopeless, entrenching feeling of despair that we’d lost two amazing people for absolutely nothing, and I started to question that day if I was even alive. The rest of the deployment was a miserable grind, always waiting for an explosion which would take your legs off, or having to gauze a carotid gunshot wound.

Salazar’s mother flew to Italy for a lost soldier’s family get-together. The company gathered money for their flight to Italy, and then showed them around the city for a week. Horsley’s family didn’t come and wished to never speak to us. I talk to his brother every now and then, but other than that, I respect their wish entirely. Salazar’s mother is a wonderful woman. They have a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and I remember Salazar sending all his money to help with her surgeries. We had a toast to his mother, and my squad leader gave a heart-wrenching speech. He broke down in tears during it, saying he was sorry he couldn’t bring her little boy home. That is a guilt I can honestly say is with me every second of my life. I’m not sure how easy that is to get across, but the few of us Wombats left from the deployment all share that burden. When at “our” bar in downtown Vicenza, where the bartenders each had drinks named after us, I had a moment with a buddy where we looked at each other, nodded, and he said “me too.” We both were thinking of him, and it was comforting knowing my pain was shared. There’s something about losing someone in war that wrenches your soul harder than any other death I’ve ever witnessed. I think about the World Wars often and the immeasurable amount of pain the world took on from those years. My usual silence about my involvement with the war makes me relate easily to those old war veterens-it’s hard to speak of war to those who haven’t experience it. And most of all, it’s hard to speak of it when you are shamed of being a part of it, while being proud of those brave enough to have endured it with you.

The days of coming back to Italy, drunk and ecstatic, walking around the parks and taking the bus downtown, were blissfully peaceful. As time goes, it’s easier to feign normalcy, but the wounds of seeing such monstrosities stays in my memory, and reminds me of what mankind is capable of, and the importance in doing whatever it takes to strive for peace, no matter how ignorant and childish a wish of such is. As for my memories, I doubt I’ll ever talk about them as brief as this again, and when I die, I know they will no longer exist unless I’ve shared them. This leaves me wondering why it even matters that I should share such a story.