Redeployment Cont.

So, as it happens often in my life, a mistake turns out to be a gift. As in this case, I didn't know that the last entry had been posted. And, I'd forgotten what I had written. And, by chance, I said some things that I found myself agreeing with. I don't usually like to reread what I write for the same reason I don't like to look at photos (old or new) of myself. I'm too inclined to see the zits. I'm not sure who that person is looking back at me and the words don't say exactly what I intended. Oh, well. Some people seem okay with it. Who am I to judge their judgement if they seem to like what they see. It is time to give up Groucho Marx's sentiment about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him (me) as a member. It's sad, though, that mirrors aren't what they used to be.

I'm sitting at my friend Ann's computer, in this bearutiful space which is her home, in Corrales, in New Mexico, in the U S of A, on Earth, in this Galaxy, in this Universe, in the mystery of whatever lies outside (or inside) it all.... Okay, the caffine is kicking in. The only meaning I'm  connected to at the moment is the cupa coffee at hand and the relaxed feeling in my back and neck contributable to having just watched this morning's contingency of hot air balloons go over while sitting in Ann's hot tub. The sky is deeply blue and their colors and shapes deeply satisfying.
The sound of them periodically firing their hot air machinery, some kind of little jet engines is what it sounds like, punctuates the quetness of their gliding slide across the sky. Their path this morning brought them right over us, sometime just over the tree tops, maybe a hundred feet up. October air here is crisp and clear and one can sometimes hear the voices of the balloon riders. They fall down from above not quite intelligable. So, this morning I shout up to the folks above me, "Good morning! Want some coffee!?"

Hey, if there was room in the yard it might happen. Two houses over, it a balloon landed the day before. I've got photos.

It takes a moment and then I hear, "Oh, there you are! Good morning! Good morning!" I can see a couple of heads looking over the side of the basket, silloetted against colored bubble above them/us. It's fun to suddenly feel a part of this outing of theirs. The balloon is huge, seems even more so because I can see up into the hot air space. It is glowing with the colors of the fabric, the morning sun and the occasional firing lighting it up inside.

 Whoa! They did hear me. How fun is that!   I wonder if we shout up to the ducks and geese that fly over by the hundreds, the thousands, at this time of year hear, would that seem friendly to them too? Here I am in the hot tub, a naked human-fish, half in and out of this artificial puddle. Do birds wonder, "What the heck....? Weird noise they make? Food?" Maybe if we all regularly spoke up to them, they'd get the idea and at least tip their wings. Or maybe they would end up coming in for a cuppa jo.

So, what does any of this have to do with reflections on leaving Ft. Hood?
And at the moment here is what I'm able to say:

Wherever I go, there I am - sometimes happy, sometimes lonely, sometimes confused or irritated or afraid (I'm afraid a lot, it seems), and sometimes, I'm feeling totally within my own skin, as the saying goes, as when engaging a couple of ballooners on a crisp October morning with no other purpose required. And that's the case with being at Ft. Hood too.

Inside my own skin, I'm cruising at light speed without feeling rushed to get somewhere, to fix someone, to be more than I can be, to parahrase. I'm expressing without thought or judgement about how I'm doing, whether playing my part correctly, should know what I'm supposed to do next. I'm just there trying to trust the process. It may last up to thirty seconds at a time. If you read the first entry, you know that I wasn't very close to this feeling most the time. So it goes.

Just before I left Ft. Hood, I said to one of the other MFLC's that I felt I was "at the top of my game." and felt that it was ironic that this should be so just as I was leaving. I meant that the details of life were mostly defined and in order and I was more able to consistently feel present and serve the clients needs more clearly. I seem to frequently or mostly forget that in new settings I can't know how to be fully there instantly. That's what new means. When I am familiar with the territory, I find it's like that streaking effect of starlite shooting by when the Enterprise launches itself  into warp speed (though, to my knowledge, no one from planet Earth really has experienced this, so I'm just guessing at the imagery here). Whoosh, and then I pop out into another, calmer space.

It is good to somewhat consciously, in the midst of the thought-bound-defined view of my life, to notice that I'm sitting here with this (soldier, woman, man, Sgt, Cptn, angry, sad, scared, interestig, deadicated, brave, honorable...) person, and that's all I need to be doing or being. All of the decisions the each of us has made has brought us to this moment. So, I can trust that it IS the right one. We can't do it wrong. And, as it has been pointed out to me, nothing I'm going to do today is likely to be all that important in the history of things. But it is quiter important that I do it. A butterfly flaps its wings, an atom is split, a balloon flys overhead. Nothing will be the same again.
So, reflecting on what I have gotten from this Ft. Hood experience is a kind of third-person view of myself who sees me lapsing out of being present and then becoming aware of myself in the moment, and I feel satisfied with myself, with my life, with the simplicity of this process, even as I'm judging that I really don't have a clue what I'm talking about or what I'm up to most of the time. Who is this "I" doing the watching anyway? Will the real me pleas stand up.

One of the things that this noticing brough to my attention was that I hadn't had a hug in weeks and had ignored the fact that I was feeling some hunger for the comfort of being touched. I realized that I had assumed the waiting place again, waiting to see if it was safe to do with the people around me what my friends and I do, hug eachother hello. I mentioned this to a couple of other MFLCs and discovered that I wasn't alone in this after all. We therapists/helpers were all doing what I was doing, ignoring my/our need for support. Thereapist, heal thyself. Gary, ask for a hug. It worked.
And then I forget it all with the next client, the next worry about getting my invoice right, or the next invitation to participate in some drama about our employer, often invited by my own mind. Or, the next shift in thought or feeling demanding that I pay freaking attention to them. So, screw them all if they can't take a joke, it's time for lunch and who turned off the air conditioning!?

I miss the politeness instituionalize in the military because I noticed that it seemed that things and people actually felt and worked better, a useful self-fulfilling prophacy: fake it 'till you make it (feel free to use this phrase).

I liked being addressed as "sir", of hearing the women addressed as "ma'm". Beats being patronized (or self-patronizing) with "senior citizen" or "eighty-years young", or simply being ignored. I also liked that people acknowledged one another in passing most the time and saluting took on a friendler face. It reminded me of walking in Spain where it was the exception for people to pass one another without acknowledment. Buenes Dias; good morning souldier; Sgt; sir; touching my cap to you. I never would have thought I'd approve anything about "the military."

I admire the cultural expectation that one soldier seeing another struggling with addiction, with PTSD, with whatever trouble, is to speak to this person. Beyond a few suggestions, the expectation is: "Soldier, you need to get some help and I'm going with you to help you get it." Really. This happens.

I appreciate the reminder that the messanger and the message are not the same, i.e. people  populate "the military" with all the same range of reasons that people populate any enterprise. My prejudice about how the military is used, my belief system around this, my judgements, whether unrecognized or known, if thoughtlessly gralized can lead peace-loving hippys to spit on Viet Vets, or poliece clubbing marchers for expressing themselves in a peace parade. When I turn some group into a "them", I'm judging that my view is right and "they" are wrong just by being associated with the enterprise. And that's the rub. I learned at Fort Hood to see people first and the larger role of the enterprise became secondary. It felt like a relief to let go of my opinions for awhile.

I realize more clearly now, that my own experience in the military never gave me a wider perspective of this entity as an enterprise. It strikes me once again (as it did when I "deployed" with the Red Cross to the Katrina aftermath, a battlefield for sure, as it did when I returned to university after Vietnam, as it did with this deployment to Ft. Hood) that much or even most of our society is structured pretty much on the military model. The hurry up and wait is built into our systems, the hirarchy is institutionalize in government, in coprporations, in education, in churchs, in families.

 When I see positive aspects about the structure, my own inner voice (and other people's outer voice) seems to want to deny that this is possible. But, they say, he big difference is that you're not free to quit the military. You can quit your job. Actually, you can quit the military. It's just that the consequences are often pretty dire, e.g. you can be shot for desertion if you quit in a war zone. 

Remember Catch 22?  If you're sane enough to want to get out of the war/military, you'r too sane to be let out for insanity (my free translation). It's no accident that our lexicon now incoporates "catch 22" as an understood experience in our lives, particularly when it comes to business and government and the rules/laws that govern us.

How many of us who are employed as civilians have said quite seriously, "Well, I can't quit because....(fill in your own reason)."  The Mafia shoots people who try to quit. Same difference. And, it might just be that the consequences I'm not willing to experience in quitting a job will lead me to an early grave from the stress of it which is sort of lke being shot only with a really slow bullet and longer suffering. Hell, I might die emotionally and spiritually long before my body craps out when I'm doing something against some value I claim to hold (e.g. coporate pollution; illegal trading; wasteful exploitation of the environment, biggie sizing, etc.). So, I guess I've been given a reminde
I've appreciated the moments of unhappiness, loneliness, anxiety, at least in retrospect. Even somewhat at the time as well.  It was a forced invitation to come to my senses, to look about me, and realize that I was living (am living) in luxury that most people on the planet only dream of, i.e. my hotel room, the car I drive, the money I'm paid, even the office building and offices we saw clients in at the fort, and so forth). I was and am not a victim here. The reminder: I mostly make up the drama that my feelings and my thoughts trigger. The process of noticing, and noticing the process as it unfolded, felt like some kind of progress in my struggle to really be in my life. And then I'd forget and get pissed off at the air conditioning.

One of the residents I talked to in Biloxie, Mississippi, four days after Katrina blew through, responded to my guilt for being there as kind of adventure to "rescue" them when I could then leave in three weeks to my real life. Theywere stuck there with nothing much left. What he said, was: "Thank you for coming all the way here. It's relly good to know that you are aware of us out there. It helps feel that there is normal life going on some place. It's hopeful that it's a possibilty for me again."

During this tour at Ft. Hood I got subtle and blatent reminders of the fact that I am still a grunt in my current army, i.e. Mental Health Network. Noticing the parallel is somehow healing for unfinished business I wasn't aware was still pending.  Everyone's got an army and a battle.

I have been mostly relieved of my fear of military people, especially Sergents and Officers, and that has allowed me to view them as people and not categories to fear This is a good thing, unhooking from this fear. Still, when my current 1st Sgt. (my boss at MHN headquarters) calls wanting to know why I haven't gotten my quota of contacts for the week, I feel fear and shame instantly. So, I feel more solid, more the kind of man I want to be in feeling kinship with these soldiers as people first, though in different armys together. Some warriors are in the military, some are civilians. All same-same, popa san.

I'm not ready to join the military, though, as I said, I liked some of the social clarity that military culture provides/demands. I am surprised to find myself in this place. Yet, I can see more clearly that the attraction is to a container that is less ambivelent and mushy about it's expectations and protocols. One only has to watch about ten minutes of news to see how we civilians have lost much civility and clarity and definition. Or, so it seems to me. Note: One of the women I worked with told me before I left that she had decided she might join the Army. It seemed less chaotic and more secure than her current life. She is, by the way, a very real and very helpful helper.



Over the years,  I've talked to many soldiers who have had this kind of unsettling longing to "go back". It certainly wasn't to the killing and destruction, at least not for most. It's my judgement  that the attraction is to the simplicity of being engaged with life at a very basic level: what is it that I need to do to stay alive today - 3 squares and a bunk and my buddies. The mission - first, staying alive; then getting us all home. A poncho liner is worth more than a BMW in a rice paddy and there's no mortgage.
It's appears to me also that there is more than lip service being given to wanting the quality of military life to include honoring the whole person. "Be All  That You Can Be," the Army's former advertising slogan, turns out to have been inspired by a General in the Pentagon who admires the Samauri's passionate commitment to being complete warriors physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually.

Shortly before I left Ft. Hood, I heard the Commding General speak to several hundred new soldiers. Here's what he said (my paraphrase): You can get everything you need for yourself as a soldier here on base or wherever you get deployed - except family. You only get family at home. Yet it is for your family that all we do in the military is really for. I've been married almost thirty years. I have had thirty years of reason and help in doing this job from this fact alone. That's why on this base we stop work at five. That's why every Thursday, we get off work at three. So you can go home and be with your family.

In my own life, mostly a self-employed person, sometimes working for someone else's enterprise, I often didn't  give myself this advice let alone carry it out. Truth is truth, goodness goodness, no matter where one hears it.

It's amusingly ironic that I should find my own healing coming in a place that, for fourty years, I have feared and hated and thought to be mostly without redeeming value.

Wrong again and worth it.