Lift Aloft
There is a slightly crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes on the central console.
Wind whips through open doors, and a green leafy sea flows beneath the hull. Like a jealous and unpredictable ocean, a blanket of trees forms an ebb and flow that is less than predictable; starbursts of bright orange or yellow are the only sign of jetties and shallows that will tear a ship apart.
The spang of metal on metal reverberates through the airframe as the jungle ocean roils, and a Kalishnikov mist reaches skyward.
Not a word is spoken, and the door gunner does what door gunners do. For a few moments, the sea of trees below is churned; soon, the ocean calms.
Two men, alert, awake, and weary, watch the gunner at work. A third man lies supine on a canvas gurney, eyes clenched shut. He is ashen, gray, fading in and out of consciousness. When he’s awake, he grimaces in pain. Blood pools beneath him, and everyone’s hands are stained crimson.
They are all too tired to speak, too stunned to be afraid, too shocked to care. One of the men seated upright wears a dirty bandage on his left hand, and another where his left boot used to be. “Million Dollar Wounds,” they said. Folks get by fine with seven toes instead of ten.
The other passenger stares at the world with only one eye. Vermilion gauze makes a patch, and he is the resident pirate of this airship.
Ninety mile an hour winds whip through the cabin, but the dying man on his back wants a smoke. He’s come to, and in a moment of clarity, catches the one remaining eye of his companion. With trembling hands, he pantomimes the act of smoking.
There is a slightly crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes on the central console. The G.I. leans forward between the two officers operating the vehicle, and without asking, helps himself and divides the secret booty. Shielding the flame as best he can, he lights up.
Almost immediately, the wind whips away any chance of a good inhale, but he tries, just the same. The cherry flares, glowing brightly and burning furiously.
His fingers leave pink stains on the white paper of the cigarette.
He leans down, gently and lovingly placing bloodstained tobacco between the lips of his mortally wounded friend.
The man on the gurney smiles his thanks and does his best to finish the stolen, secret cigarette before death robs him of his last chance at momentary joy.
After they land, the captain notices his Lucky Strikes are missing. When he finds the pack stuck to the deck, crimson and tattered, he doesn’t mind. He fishes out one of the three smokes he has left.
It’s just another day in Lai Khê, 1968.
The placer
The sage and his disciple were sitting near their the table and were silent.
"Look" - the sage began, having scattered the beads on the table: "Here lies a couple of hundred balls, one of them is white, the rest are black, and you easily noticed it, right?"
"Right."
"And if all the balls will be white, will you notice it?"
"Probably no."
"Similarly in life – we usually have around absolutely gray and bad world, full of evil and deceit, but when some happiness appears there, we immediately see it, singl it out, and against the background of small joys, you can sometimes simply miss it away."
Midnight Thoughts
It's a wonder I can't hear my heart breaking, I think. It feels and hurts so much that its shatter can't possibly be silent. But when its been chipped away at, piece by piece, year after year, and all that's left is to give one little tap and it'll all fall apart- well, that's when it makes the least noise I suppose- a silent cocophany that drowns out any possibility of noise. My heart's been broken for awhile, I realise. It's only different now because while before I suffered my heartbreak on my lonesome, now I do so with my arms wrapped around the undeserving victims of tragic circumstance.
And that, I concede, is the reason why this heartbreak is one to crush all others: because when other people are involved, I can't help but feel from them, and in order to feel from them I need to extricate myself from my bubble of isolated emotion.
I wonder, now, if it's over- if it'll ever really be over. Layer upon layer of struggle leaves me tired of saying, "Now this?"
When will they be done with me? I don't plan on giving up anytime soon, as much as their whispered words tell me I do. This could be a long struggle if one of us doesn't yield.
Am I mad at God? I think so, yeah. Am I mad at myself? Definitely. Am I mad at the world? No. If you're still reading this because you have nothing better to do, then know that I am not mad at you.
I'm so sick of losing. I'm sick of losing friends, losing family, losing faith and hope and health, losing opportunities and interest and my grip on reality. None of this seems real anymore, and if I ask myself, none of it's felt real in years. So where does that leave me? Am I the lonely girl with nothing to lose? The sob story that someone will take a moment to pity? Am I even living anymore? I remember a teacher once saying to me, in one of my worst times, "You can't keep doing this every day, this is barely living." Words have never been more truthful.
I don't know what this is anymore or where it's going, so I'll leave it at this; Maybe you can learn something from me. Maybe not, maybe you'll just go on with your day and never think of this again, and that would be just fine because not everything needs to have a point. But if you take anything away from this which has strayed so far from its poetic roots, take away this:
You're alive. I'm alive. We are alive, and nothing in all of creation can invalidate our jumbled mess of emotions- and that's what makes us human.
I intend to...
I have had a rough week, as my sister-in-law passed away on Monday evening and she was a year older than me. It was complications due to an illness and it was coming, just any day really. But the thing that hits me the most is that, I had no feeling of loss.
That scared me, maybe I will later, maybe I am doing what i always do in a family crisis and keep everyone going. I don't know. We knew each other in high school but hung out in different crowds. I was there when my brother started dating her, when they got married, when they had each of their three girls. Her legacy.
She was in pain so to me, this was kind of a relief. She isn't in pain any more. And it is kind of like death is a three-part act. Before you die, you die, then the aftermath. We're in the third act of this un-wanted play. Arrangements are being made today and then we will be in our best garb to say good-bye. Motions without emotions.
I do not know if I could do what she did, and keep going, knowing that the end was near.
even this write has taken me a day or two to set in place. I just know this, I want my life to be full...not with things but with people and experiences. Loves and lovers, and the places yet to see, with or without them. The traveling lover, the emotional experimentalist...just me.
Thank you to those I have been more than in touch with, and to you, the reader of this write for being my ear when I need it. Isn't that funny, it didn't hit me till right now, that this page is an ear for me...what face do you picture when you put words to the page?
Have you told them how much you appreciate them?
Life is so short, so go live it. I intend to...
Madness
It was as if her mind was a piece of sinew, twisted into an irreversible knot that with each pull strains ever tighter. Or else her mind was a piece of elastic, worn to the point of rigidity, that at the slightest pressure snaps, slack, lifeless. Perhaps her mind had become squashed putty, or that her thoughts were unfocused beams that scatter across the darkness, illuminating nothing.
Mind doodle. Guildford bus station
There is a poster on the wall next to me urging me to consider the plight of the workers in the textile industry, they are paid very little and are expected to work long hours just to make cheap clothes. The irony is I'm right outside one of the biggest retailers of cheap clothing in the U.K. I watch the passengers climb on board the bus with their bags of 'stuff' and wonder how much of it they realy need? what purpose does this accumulation of stuff serve? Surely we must have reached 'peak stuff' now. Or are we destined to drown in our own junk?