Peace is Not a Possession
Our introductory encounters leave us frustrated and mystified,
but we are compelled to persist, obliged to endure, enjoined to
go through the motions. We sort their possessions, pack their
leavings, and convey their treasured souvenirs, but it's not
until you come-out with only your life and the least of your
basic issue that any determination of what's truly important can
be decided. After a time, you can begin to recognize the people
who're resigned to an inexplicable fate, who're disspiritedly
inviting their destiny, who're impotent to meld the codified past
with the chaotic future. You can recognize the ones who're
mastered, who're undone, who've nothing left to live for, and yet
you can do nothing about it. No one is surprised by their loss
... even when it takes miles and years to happen. The intimacy of
death can be depersonalized, the miserable despair can be
ignored, that panicked desperation can be neglected ... almost
anything can be made into synthetic evidence, can be rationalized
into some abstraction. In some accounting scheme, the pressure of
dire hope can be counterbalanced by the weight of lost souls.
Once you've emotionally detached, have protectively disengaged,
it will take more than neural mapping to reconnect your vital
organs, to reassemble the fragments, to recover
from the traumatic schizophrenia. The compartmentalizations and
separations may be the necessary mode of a survivor, but ultimate
truths have been etched into the secret places of everyone
confronting mortality. These indelible impressions cannot be
lost, and they're only destroyed when you are. A warrior may
carry a heavy heart, but he'll always travel light, because he
already knows what's most important.
The counter-culture was oriented to unloading their theoretical
baggage all over the metaphoric road, so society was both
radically encumbered and massively converted ... into a
convenient trash yard. Soldiers are oriented toward efficient
movement, until the order to load more symbolic stones into their
rucksacks makes them deliberately incompetent, immobile, and
ineffectual. Obligation and conformity regulates both of these
sample sets, but only one profits at the other's expense. While
the anti-establishment simplicity-trippers have an intellectual
knowledge of possessions as baggage, which dominates the owner
and restricts potential latitude, it pales in comparison with a
soldier's understanding. The personal property of a combatant,
issued by his government, sent by loved ones, slowly acquired by
a meager pay-rate, are only possessed for their function
and utility ... a knife cuts aiming stakes, a flak-jacket
protectS the body, a book refreshes the mind, a photo or letter
restores the spirit. A combatant's rucksack will never become too
full or too heavy because it only contains essentials. A soldier
barely old enough to shave knows that the truism about being born
and dying naked is not a cliché. His blood-stippled body
is wrapped in a uniform poncho, his private possessions are sent
home, and his gear is redistributed, because the mission is not
finished, and the war is not yet over. Please don't tell me how
much you truly care about groovy non-violence and
modish tranquility, because the wreckage of your self-indulgent tantrum litters this once coherent nation. Please don't
try to explain how your serene commitment to induced
love and your concerned devotion to everlasting
peace didn't rid the world of suffering or violence or
oppression. Please don't tell me how mustard seed belief
and Tinkerbell faith can transmute hot lead and cold
steel into transcendental profundities. My piece is still locked
and loaded, and my ruck is still packed and ready to go, whenever
the despotic do-gooders arrive at my door. Real soldiers
never unpack their sensibilities, nor surrender their spiritual
fortress, no matter how accommodating the sentimental state nor
receptive the political ambiance.
by Pan Perdu
... who is a former soldier and VA counselor; this work has been
excerpted from Fragmentations, a book in progress.
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