Still in Lubbock, still in uniform, still headed across the Atlantic, still blogging, still missing my girlfriend, still Michael.
Generally Good News:
-Ping pong tournament. I took out the Chaplain, who has a vicious backhand, 21-17. This means... nothing in the long run. Everything in the short run in terms of my ego.
-Lots of down time. This means reading and watching movies (Incredibles-overrated, Black Hawk Down-heck yeah, We Were Soldiers-solid film, Kingdom of Heaven-ask DB)
-Open bar from 5-8pm, every night. Not that I really drink much but if I did, oh boy. I've befriended the Asian bartender, a middle-aged women with more make up than a circus clown, and I enjoy pretending it's a off-off-off Broadway version of Lost In Translation, not that that makes any sense at all.
-Back into working out.
-New friends.
-Moving to Germany in 70 days seems very real and exciting.
Generally Bad News: -4am wake up calls (see below)
-I miss all my friends so much. I'm missing CRU tonight. I'm missing Sean's philosophical questions, Dan's back pack wave, Nikki's "I know", Dawn's hammer... The list goes on and on.
-Moving to Germany in 70 days seems very real and... terrifying.
**
Exhausting and Verbose Narrative? You got it...
At 4am in the Texas panhandle, under a dream lit sky of rain streaked purples and diminished grays, every town is a ghost town. Just ask Lubbock. A streaking wind coils around the sleeping houses, their appearance one of desertion if not for children's wagons and bicycles which litter the yards like cold confetti.
The sound of hundreds of feet crunching into the wet pavement breaks into the thick silence as we run for miles along the edge of a deserted airfield, moving as one grey shadow. My chest constricts as I gulp the freezing air, swallowing ice cubes.
Earth spins wildly, time presses on, morning breaks. The sun, a punctured pouch of electric liquid, bleeds up and across the metallic horizon. It's unbearable beauty, divine panoramic, a post-modern sunrise.
On less than three hours of sleep, everything happens in slow motion. My body feels wooden, each movement crunches like the breaking of a pencils tip. I keep running, letting each leg swing forward in pendulum tick-tock. The sunset overtakes all of us and I stare into it, imagining myself fluttering away, a ghost evaporating into planet silhouette.
Why have I said any of this? What does it mean? Where I am going?
1 comment:
Professor,
We have been through this, even painfully so. You don't want to know what it all means. Yours is the path of modest apathy, observation, and bewilderment when it comes to the unified force that makes up the sword arm of our federal government. I would not change you, but "they" might. Tread lightly friend, and guard your spirit well.
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