It's In Our Nature

As I write this, Nature is literally tapping at my window, in the form of a starling who thinks that his reflection in the mirrored glass is another male encroaching on his territory. He flies up and pecks at the window tappy-tap-ta-ta-tappy-tap then rushes back to make sure his family and nest are safe before making another run on his equally aggressive reflection.

This has been going on all week, and I suspect that the eggs have hatched now, because today, there is a female starling joining him at the window from time to time.

The mating pair of hawks has also returned to our hillside, as they do most every year. This year, one of them is trailing a sort of string from one of its legs, and I wonder if it wasn't here last year because it was in captivity. Three years ago, the pair had two little ones, and year before last, the yearlings could be seen hunting with their parents in the afternoons.

Most often, the smaller birds harass the hawks without mercy, for this week, the starlings are entirely consumed by the perceived threat from non-existent members of their own species, and the hawks are enjoying the freedom to swoop down to the corner and pick up a fresh rabbit or squirrel without an entourage.

The reason the starlings haunt the hawks is because the bigger birds don't seem to have any scruples regarding the raiding of nests.

(I imagine that this is the sort of conversation they might have, if I can be permitted a small amount of anthropomorphization:

He Hawk: "Hmmm. I'm feeling a mite peckish, Portia. I could do with a snack, perhaps a little chickie-morsel? Do we have anything in the scrub-pine to munch on?"

She Hawk: "See for yourself.")

All of this makes me think about how sometimes our instincts can fail us. We get so focused on something inconsequential that we ignore the really important stuff close at hand.

Tap, tap.

It Had To Happen Sooner Or Later...

Catching Up

Yep.  Been away a while.  Can’t say that I haven’t missed writing…just haven’t had much to say.  I’ve sat down a few times, but if I can be permitted a vulgar analogy, I’ve been afflicted with a kind of literary constipation.  

After taking a moment to arrange a bit of music to write by, I’m ready – at last – to set down a few thoughts, paced by the tapping of my toe.

As if I have any.

Thoughts, that is.

What is it with people these days?  According to an article on the news page at imdb.com, Morgan Spurlock (Oscar-nominated documentarian responsible for Super Size Me) delivered an over-the-top lecture at a Pennsylvania high school, mocking special education students and teachers.  Apparently, his talk included the use of the F-bomb.  Now, I’m a sailor, and the use of the F-bomb generally doesn’t offend me…unless I’m in the presence of someone who will be offended by it.  I’m a big fan of language, and let’s face it, fuck is a word, and pretty useful one, at that.  What offends me about this, if it’s true, is the mocking.  Spurlock later said that he couldn’t understand the unfavorable reaction on the part of the school, saying, “The greatest lesson those kids learned today was the importance of free speech.”  

Dude, it was a health fair.  You were there to talk about the risks of eating too much fast food.  How do jokes about pot-smoking teachers tie in, here?  Right.  They don’t.

And since when does spouting crap in public teach anyone about the importance of free speech?  Not to be contrary, here, but all Spurlock actually did was teach his audience that free speech exists, something they probably already knew.

If you want to teach a lesson on the importance of free speech, ditch the disrespect and start talking about Abdul Rahman, the man facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity.  

I know, I got off on a tangent there.

In other news, my sister’s baby seems to be doing well.  There is still concern, and after her last ultrasound, the doctor made the decision to move her delivery to a hospital with a better-equipped NICU, in case there are complications.  (As if tumors on her heart and in her brain aren’t complications enough.)  My sister reports that the baby is very active, though she hasn’t yet turned head-down in preparation for being born…so, in yet another challenge, she’s slated for a C-section on April 7th.  I’m headed up to LA that day to join the crowd in the waiting room.

I’ll also be joining them on the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance Walk for the Cure on June 25th…they have a website set up for sponsorship donations, and if you feel inclined, check it out: http://www.firstgiving.com/clarajane.

And as one last bit…I’ll point you to one of my very early posts.  Shortly before I wrote that post, my hairdresser tut-tutted over my soft-but-thinning locks and remarked, “You know…you might consider just shaving it all off.”  I must say that over the last ten months, I’ve uncorked every excuse in the book not to shave my head, and even rebelled by not cutting my hair at all for nigh on to five months.  I let myself get – as my buddy Bear put it – scruffy-lookin’.  

Last Sunday, I took the plunge.  It actually looks pretty good.  I’ll offer a photo as soon as I have one.

Inaccessible.

I have been taking a pseudo-break from blogging.  You may have noticed.  

Actually, I’ve been taking a break from most forms of writing.  I’m not sure why.  There haven’t been many things on my mind that have seemed worthy of throwing out there for the sake of whatever flavor of posterity comes as a side dish when the entrée is Blog.

I have felt mostly like retreating from the world, of late.  I am not unhappy…far from it…but I simply have not felt like I have the energy to extend myself and deal with other people.  

Part of it stems, I’m sure, from the realization that I’m still carrying around quite a lot of anger, which manifests itself primarily as self-abuse in the form of bad eating habits.  I have also been quite a bit shorter with people than I like – also rooted in anger.  

So, fat and unpleasant to be around, I’ve taken to being a bit reclusive: I’ve ignored voice mail from friends, failed to call when I said I would, blown off e-mails, brought my noise-canceling headphones to work, retreated to the virtual world of Microsoft Flight Simulator (where lately, I have been flying a model of a World War II-era fighter plane – with its virtual guns disabled…paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!), and have started to learn to swear in Mandarin.  (青蛙操的流氓) You probably don’t want to know what that means – and part of the joy of swearing in a language no one understands is…that no one understands.

The funny part of all this (and that’s not to say that learning to swear in a foreign language just for the sake being able to do so isn’t funny), is that I’m actually not depressed.  I’m quite content with my life, which is, on the whole, pretty effing good.  I am healthy (more or less – aside from my weight), I make a good living doing a job I love, and despite being solitary (a term I prefer to “single”), I’m not unmanageably lonely.  

You know that feeling you get when you’re in the midst of something, feeling in the groove, and you’re surprised to find that you’re bleeding, but you have no idea when it happened or how?  It isn’t particularly painful, or you’d have noticed the injury right away, but you need to stop and tend to it…and then you don’t quite feel safe any more, doing what you were doing.

That’s how I feel right now.

What’s bleeding?  Certainly not my heart, which you’ll know from reading my last post.  I’m not sure.  

I do know that I’ve become aware of the perception people seem to have that I am damaged.  And not just me…but the women I seem to be attracting.  Not all of the women who’ve found me attractive of late would qualify as “damaged”, but the one who is not falls squarely into a category that can only be called “inaccessible”.  

Which makes me wonder: Do I choose that?  Do I have something against being in a healthy, supportive relationship?  Have I chosen to isolate myself?  Which of the two of us is really the inaccessible one?

IA

None of the military folks I know are happy.  

Normally, these are people who greet life with ebullience neatly camouflaged behind a façade of darkly twisted humor.  

I’ll give you an example.  One morning at sea some years ago, I stood with two of my shipmates on the fo’c’sle (all the way up on the bow) of our ship, USS COWPENS (CG 63), as one of them prepared to lob two concussion grenades over the side as sound effects for our battle-readiness training.  I had another role to fulfill that morning, but wouldn’t be needed until later, so I hoped to have an opportunity to toss one of the grenades.  No particular reason, I just wanted to be able to say I’d once thrown a grenade.  As leading chief of the division we three were in, I could occasionally do things like that.

Our conversation may have been jovial, but none of us was anything less than serious about the task at hand.  A single mistake could kill all three of us.  Basically, it was a regular day in the U.S. Navy.

The sound of a rapidly clanging bell cut our conversation short, followed by an announcement on the 1MC*: Fire, fire, fire!  Class Charlie fire in After Steering.  Away the Flying Squad, Away!

We exchanged glances.

There was a moment of reflective silence, as we all shifted a little nervously from foot to foot.  A fire aboard ship can always lead to a long dip in the Deep Blue.

“Well,” I said, “if there’s got to be a fire in After Steering, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than up here on the fo’c’sle.”

“You’re glad to be here!” said my buddy Matt.  He pointed a thumb at Dan, and chuckled, “He’s the one holding the grenades!”

In short, sailors are fun-loving and fatalistic about the dangers they’ve chosen to face.

There’s a key word in that last sentence: chosen.

Two weeks ago, our command got a message announcing its obligation to support a program called “Individual Augmentation”, which is an attempt to help the Army and Marine Corps meet their personnel rotation requirements in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Horn of Africa, and Guantanimo Bay by sending sailors to work in supporting roles such as communications specialists and prison guards.  Each “Individual Augmentee” serves in his or her role for a minimum of one year.

There was a list of names accompanying the message.  One of my office mates has been slated to go, and as of this morning, the rest have been put on notice that they, too, may be expected to go at any time.  At the school next door, seven people are going.

Before they are assigned to a new and exciting location, they’ll undergo three days of medical screening and be offered time to take care of any legal matters (such as the writing of a will), followed by seven days of physical fitness, weapons, and tactics training.  They’ll spend an hour or two learning about “Improvised Explosive Devices” (IEDs…booby traps), another hour or two on land navigation, a couple hours on convoy operations, and a couple on urban combat operations.  The last of the seven days will be a practical exercise offering them an opportunity to put the things they’ve learned in the classroom to good use.

This is a Bad Idea.  

First, these are people who bring a skill set that is entirely alien to the ground-pounder’s battlefield, and virtually none of what they know now will stand them in good stead when they climb aboard that first convoy.  

Second, this lack of knowledge will make them a danger to themselves and to the units they are sent to augment.

Third, the danger that these individual augmentees bring with them will undermine the esprit de corps that is essential for a unit’s ability to perform its combat function.

Finally, no one volunteered for this shit.

In the short term, more American military members will die, and the war will last longer.  In the longer term, our all-volunteer military will collapse from the inevitable wholesale departure of smart, well-trained professionals who won’t put up with such an egregious misapplication of their talents.

By now, you may be questioning the intelligence and sanity of our current leadership.  Even if you hadn’t been already.

Actually, gentle reader, this is the cost of, “Oppose the war, support the troops.”

I turned it around on you, didn’t I?  

The simple truth is that those who did choose to serve in the military are now being asked to accept the unthinkable because the average citizen couldn’t be bothered to pitch in.  If you look back at past generations…your parents and grandparents…you’ll see that they rallied to their cause in ways our generation has dismissed as quaint, ignorant, and misguided.  The members of Easy Company, 506th Battalion, 101st Airborne Division didn’t start asking about going home until the Germans capitulated.  The men who commissioned the first USS COWPENS (CVL 25) deployed to the Pacific Theater in 1943 and didn’t come home for twenty-three months.  No one told them they’d be able to go home in six months, or eight, or ten, or a year; they were shown a job, and they simply did it the best they could until they led the procession of American warships into Tokyo Bay in August 1945.  They were prepared to go longer, if necessary, and nothing short of Unconditional Surrender could have convinced them that their task was done.

For the average citizen in this country today, guts are quaint and tenacity is misguided.  Relationships are not the only things we can’t commit to.

There is a principle of strategy that was taught by the great samurai Miyamoto Musashi that went like this: Do not commit to combat until it is certain that you must.  When you do, turn neither to the left nor to the right; drive directly toward the center of your enemy, and do not stop until one of you is defeated.

Perhaps it was never truly certain that we should commit to war in Iraq.  But once committed, we should…as a nation of citizens…have pressed forward until we achieved unconditional surrender, instead of settling for what we have -- the hellishly slow descent through stalemate into self-induced defeat.  Anyone who thinks we’d simply have installed a puppet government and left it to its own efforts to rebuild needs to visit Japan or Germany…both of which are leaders on the world stage, and neither feels any particular obligation to support the US at the expense of its own interests.

Opposed to the war?  Fine.  Noted.  Like it nor not, we are there now, and if we were to leave now, we’d cause more harm than if we stayed to get the job done.  So we might as well roll up our sleeves and get it done.

Support the troops?  I have a suggestion for you, then: Become one.



* PA system aboard ship