What follows is an email that I sent to some of the other counselors I was with at Ft. Hood. It pretty well sums up my current feelings and thoughts. I may go back in the next couple of days for another 30 days to help with traumatic incident debriefing. I have been contacted by a number of my friends inquiring about how I'm doing for which I'm feeling blessed. I feel kind of like when my van was once broken into or my car stolen: something personal has been vilated. If you happen to be reading this, thanks you too for your interest and know I feel your support of me is additive with mine for the direct and indirect victims of this sad affair at Ft. Hood. Here's the email:
Hey, folks.
I don't often listen to the news or watch tv. So, I learned about the Hood shootings when three friends called to see how I was feeling.
Nice to have such friends.
Painful to have to be reminded by something like this.
I'm both grateful not to have to be there for the aftermath, and also sad not to be there to help directly.
I feel sad and scared about this craziness, especially as it adds insult to injury, so to speak.
I'm angry too that a "mental health" person is the perpetrater, it often being hard enough in ordinary circumstances to gain credibility and trust for what we do in the military culture.
When the helper is the perpetrator the wounding seems more cruel.
I know in my head and heart that I'm not responsible for his actions and choices.
Any more than it's a reflection on Muslums or "foreigners" in our military or country, etc.
But, still, I found myself resenting the possibility that all the good work that MFLAC's are doing, have done, can do, will be wounded here as well.
I know there's a lot of powerful emotions the MFLAC's on rotation are having, lot's of triggers here to address on all levels,
It's always more traumatic to find that our safe havens are vulnerable to craziness, especially so when it's seemingly so random
and from a resource which asks for trust at the deepest on the most personal level.
Anyway, it made me think of you and of the time we were there doing our best to help the soldiers and their families heal from their deployments.
Now, I expect there are some ways that we'll find ourselves needing to do some of that ourselves as the ante has been upped there, so to speak.
So, I'm thinking of the MFLAC's there that I don't know and wanting to send them some heart energy, help to make their way as helpers. Support to find support for eachother.
They're on the front lines big time right now, hunh!?!
Anyway, it has been a friendly thing to feel like connecting with you even though it is a painful event which has prompted it.
It seems both as though it was just yesterday and a year ago that I was there with you. Funny how time and duration changes as one gets older.
My life truly is richer for the time I got to spend with you and I wish you, wish us, wish all those soldiers and their families graceful healing.
I know it's lucky that people with heart are there to serve this end.
Take care,
Gary Glenn
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Redeployment Home: Some musings on Saying So Long, Good Bye, Vaya con Dios, Etc.
Today is the last day of mu life up until now. I'm in the process of detaching from my sojourn at Ft. Hood. Got off work early (my team lead made arrangements to have me covered), didn't make my numbers (contacts instead of widgets), came back to my room (home for seven weeks), did an hour in the little weight room (treadmill, weights, what the hell is happening to me!). Now this. Giving myself permission to mull over the moment.
I didn't used to "do" goodbys. I would try to treat leaving like business as usual. After a while, I learned that a kind of compromise Ho!
Sometimes it was okay, a choice to not emote feelings which were private and which I wasn't either sure exactly what they were or, if I could seperate out and recognize an emotion, I wasn't up to putting words with the feeling.
There was some sort of embarrasment about this.
Like when I was a kid looking away when the cowboy kissed the girl (or his horse).
It was a mixture of a desire to look, a movment in the chest reagion (and later somewhat lower region), and a pain that seemed might overwhelm me. Acturally, no one told me not to cry when I felt like it, felt sad, or lonely in advance of the parting.
I actually don't seem to have the chemistry for easily crying and that has sometimes been quite painful.
I learned this from experiencing times when crying just came out and it felt good not to have to try to do the emotions with words.
It gets closer to essece of the moment vs maybe the meaning
Along the way to now I was fortunate to have it brought to my attention, through some pretty emotional partings,
that sharing what you value about another person,
lets them know that you see them and perceive them, and that this actually feels good.
By being seen one knows more readily that one actually exists.
it possibly may encourage them to recognize or reconnect with and perhaps own their presence on the planet as a gift requiring ony that they show up, be present, be in touch.
One also
I didn't used to "do" goodbys. I would try to treat leaving like business as usual. After a while, I learned that a kind of compromise Ho!
Sometimes it was okay, a choice to not emote feelings which were private and which I wasn't either sure exactly what they were or, if I could seperate out and recognize an emotion, I wasn't up to putting words with the feeling.
There was some sort of embarrasment about this.
Like when I was a kid looking away when the cowboy kissed the girl (or his horse).
It was a mixture of a desire to look, a movment in the chest reagion (and later somewhat lower region), and a pain that seemed might overwhelm me. Acturally, no one told me not to cry when I felt like it, felt sad, or lonely in advance of the parting.
I actually don't seem to have the chemistry for easily crying and that has sometimes been quite painful.
I learned this from experiencing times when crying just came out and it felt good not to have to try to do the emotions with words.
It gets closer to essece of the moment vs maybe the meaning
Along the way to now I was fortunate to have it brought to my attention, through some pretty emotional partings,
that sharing what you value about another person,
lets them know that you see them and perceive them, and that this actually feels good.
By being seen one knows more readily that one actually exists.
it possibly may encourage them to recognize or reconnect with and perhaps own their presence on the planet as a gift requiring ony that they show up, be present, be in touch.
One also
Monday, September 14, 2009
Baby Massage in the Military
This morning I did a Briefing, where I talk about the Military and Family Life Program, for a Baby Massage Class. It was four or five couples sitting on the floor in a living room here at one of the facilities where all kinds of military classes and training happen. The point wasn't to teach the babys how to do massage, of course, but it was an amusing thought that crossed my mind. Stepping from the brightly lit hallway with a floor shined as only the military seems to be able to do, into a carpeted, lamp-lit, quiet space felt almost as though I'd been "beamed up" into some other time and place. The woman who was facilitating the class was dressed as though she was in/from India, her face partially hidden by the scarff covering her head and a very sweet and peaceful smile. And get this, one of the parents was a dad. It all felt so, well, so not what I would have thought to find here on one of the biggest military bases on the planet. Welcome to the paradox of the modern military.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Bits and Pieces
Last weekend I drove to Austin. I know a young man named Austin whom I like quiite well. I think that may be why I've found myself already predisposed to like the city Austin.
Austin is about the same travel time as from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon - an hour and twenty minutes or so. Without the high desert and alpine scenery. Much of what I did see was like parts of Rt. 66 going west from Seligman, AZ. The old parts. The look of the small, one story buildings, the ages of which appeared to date back to the era of two-lane roads and gas pumps with round globes on top, road side exhibits for ruins and two headed chickens, the look of rural farmland and scrub desert built over and now passed through by the interstate. The land itself is reminiscent of some of the desert surrounding, say, Phoenix or Tucson, the high desert part that is a lot of limestone and then some juniper or mesquite and grass cover. It was, after all, under the same ocean as the rest of the southwest, the several oceans one should say. Shells and other remnents of sea life to be found in the rocks. In the rain it smells to me kind of like the ocean as does the desert around southern AZ when it rains there. Or, maybe it's just my imagination.
Ever read a book called High Tide in Tucson (Barbra Kinsolver)? Title comes from an essey about how the crabs in her aquarium still move to the rythem of the tides moving in oceans they no longer inhabit. Not exactly the same thing as what I'm talking about, but this book and her others, which unfold in and around Tucson, are really satisfying for me, especially because I experience the physical energy of the terrain that is the setting for her thoughts and tales. Her connecting it to the larger picture of larger forces moving us like the sea life far from the sea is a reminder that I am like that as well and this is the same sea bed "all the way here in Texas" as there in Arizona or New Mexico and much farther north.
Austin Impressions:
Skyline with the mirrored rectangles; one etherial glass tower softened and exalted by a curving top swooping to a point in the sky, crystal light and lite in the morning sun; the old fashioned dome of the Capital building on a hill in the middle distance, set amongst a forest of tree tops and then the State office buildings and then the rest of the city; the college campus and "requisite" football stadium an expectant battlefield (the feeling I have in looking as I pass not unlike that of visiting other battle fields - of violence and intense activities somehow still perceptive in the air and earth); chain hotels, car dealerships, eateries of all the familiar national varieties with an occasional holdover wedged in here and there among them, hold outs from when they were the places to stay; getting off on 6th Avenue following the signs to the Visitor Center and finding myself on a quiet street lined with pubs, eateries, salons, souvenier shops, and the feel of rediscovered, redone old town anyplace USA, e.g. Sante Fe, Sedona, Flagstaff, New Hope, Seattle, Cleveland, and any place around a college campus.
Colorful buildings, colorful names, a kind of Disneyland for adults. In fact, I see almost no children, a fact which comes home to me when a family pushing two kids in a carriage and one in tow wandering behind, come around a corner and I have to move to the side to let them pass.
Here is a lovely 12 or 14 story hotel who's architecture bespeaks old wealth and old politics just a couple blocks south of the capitol. And low and behold, the Visitor Center is right here down town like it says on the signs and it is my luck that on this Laborday weekend Sunday, there is little traffic and a light crowd and a place to park seems suspiciously easy only a couple blocks away (in a Loading Zone marked Tow Away Monday-Sat. between 6:30 - 8:30AM. I ask a couple of people if they know if the parking meaters and this sign are monitored on Sundays. Just to be sure. Being towed would spoil the outing kinda. They just shrug appologetically, being tourests as well. I take a chance and eventually happen upon someone else parked in a similar place and decide to go for it. I win this lottery.).
The map I get is really helpful and the guy at the Visitor Center points out the highlights, the Capitol, the U., the Lyndon Johnson Library, the headquarters and huge market that is Whole Foods, the park by the river (is this really the Colorado as I'm told? How can that be?!) where there's a children's park and a crossing bridge under which the "world famous" colony of bats lives.
These bats exit their crevaces in a huge cloud every evening around sunset. The bridge when rebuilt included these as part of the plan to encourage them and protect them. They were thought to be a protectrion against a Typhoyd fever epidemic in the early 20th century and it appears to have worked, as it was much less severe in Austin than in other places.
Every evening under the gaze of thousands of human eyes the bats come out. I stay late to witness this and though it's a bit disappointing in that dark bats, even by the hundreds of thousands, are hard to see against the night sky, being with the people on the river bank, with the paddle wheel and private schulls and other boats plying the waters below, and the hundreds lining the railings of the bridge, it's a festive feeling to the end of my day.
I walk for several hours just taking in the sights and feel of the place. It is remeniscent of my time in San Francisco and once again I feel satisfied in conecting with this place by foot.
Eventually I notice I'm really hungry and stop in to have a 2:30 "brunch" which turns out to be Tex-Mex and quite good. It feels good to sit and after lunch wander over to the old hotel and up a grand stairway inside to a lounge area with settings of leather couches and chirs and bookshelves filled with hard bound books. I pick out one at random, a Clive Cussler mystery, and open it also at random. It manages to catch my interest and I read until I doze off. Some time later, voices passing nudge me awake. I decide the cool space in the middle of the hot afternoon feels right. So, I leave this venue and go to a small movie theater around the corner which is playing something I've wanted to see. It turns out that food and drink is served during the movie, right where you're sitting. In front of the seats and between the rows, there is a counter to put things on and an isle for the waitpersons to move to serve you. The preshow is Bevis and Butthead introducing home grown Japanese television comedy of the sort that involves people dressed in large rubber bea costumes doing bizar slapstic which is sometimes quite humerous.
After the movie, I wander down to the river where there is a rowing club and a pathway and also some pretty high-rent hotels. There are several bridges besides the one with the bats. It's peaceful to sit on the "dock of the bay". The railing along the bridge slowly begins to gather it's watchers, the sun goes down eventually peaking readly through one of the arches, a big dog jumps in off the end, kids throw sticks, and one or two stars come out. And the bats are finally flying. I'm glad.
Now I can go home. It's time. The drive just long enough to be restful but not so long as to pose a sleep-driving experiment. Killeen, TX. Who'd thought I'd call here home, even for a short period. Have you ever heard of Killeen? But, here's a footnote. My dear friend Marcy's sister was born here when her father was at Camp Hood in the "big" war.
At least, I think that's what she said. The other thing that's interesting is Marcy grew up in part on the same street in Bay Villiage, OH that my sister now lives. Maybe I'm part of Marcy's family and this is home. Naw (at least to Killeen)!
Austin is about the same travel time as from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon - an hour and twenty minutes or so. Without the high desert and alpine scenery. Much of what I did see was like parts of Rt. 66 going west from Seligman, AZ. The old parts. The look of the small, one story buildings, the ages of which appeared to date back to the era of two-lane roads and gas pumps with round globes on top, road side exhibits for ruins and two headed chickens, the look of rural farmland and scrub desert built over and now passed through by the interstate. The land itself is reminiscent of some of the desert surrounding, say, Phoenix or Tucson, the high desert part that is a lot of limestone and then some juniper or mesquite and grass cover. It was, after all, under the same ocean as the rest of the southwest, the several oceans one should say. Shells and other remnents of sea life to be found in the rocks. In the rain it smells to me kind of like the ocean as does the desert around southern AZ when it rains there. Or, maybe it's just my imagination.
Ever read a book called High Tide in Tucson (Barbra Kinsolver)? Title comes from an essey about how the crabs in her aquarium still move to the rythem of the tides moving in oceans they no longer inhabit. Not exactly the same thing as what I'm talking about, but this book and her others, which unfold in and around Tucson, are really satisfying for me, especially because I experience the physical energy of the terrain that is the setting for her thoughts and tales. Her connecting it to the larger picture of larger forces moving us like the sea life far from the sea is a reminder that I am like that as well and this is the same sea bed "all the way here in Texas" as there in Arizona or New Mexico and much farther north.
Austin Impressions:
Skyline with the mirrored rectangles; one etherial glass tower softened and exalted by a curving top swooping to a point in the sky, crystal light and lite in the morning sun; the old fashioned dome of the Capital building on a hill in the middle distance, set amongst a forest of tree tops and then the State office buildings and then the rest of the city; the college campus and "requisite" football stadium an expectant battlefield (the feeling I have in looking as I pass not unlike that of visiting other battle fields - of violence and intense activities somehow still perceptive in the air and earth); chain hotels, car dealerships, eateries of all the familiar national varieties with an occasional holdover wedged in here and there among them, hold outs from when they were the places to stay; getting off on 6th Avenue following the signs to the Visitor Center and finding myself on a quiet street lined with pubs, eateries, salons, souvenier shops, and the feel of rediscovered, redone old town anyplace USA, e.g. Sante Fe, Sedona, Flagstaff, New Hope, Seattle, Cleveland, and any place around a college campus.
Colorful buildings, colorful names, a kind of Disneyland for adults. In fact, I see almost no children, a fact which comes home to me when a family pushing two kids in a carriage and one in tow wandering behind, come around a corner and I have to move to the side to let them pass.
Here is a lovely 12 or 14 story hotel who's architecture bespeaks old wealth and old politics just a couple blocks south of the capitol. And low and behold, the Visitor Center is right here down town like it says on the signs and it is my luck that on this Laborday weekend Sunday, there is little traffic and a light crowd and a place to park seems suspiciously easy only a couple blocks away (in a Loading Zone marked Tow Away Monday-Sat. between 6:30 - 8:30AM. I ask a couple of people if they know if the parking meaters and this sign are monitored on Sundays. Just to be sure. Being towed would spoil the outing kinda. They just shrug appologetically, being tourests as well. I take a chance and eventually happen upon someone else parked in a similar place and decide to go for it. I win this lottery.).
The map I get is really helpful and the guy at the Visitor Center points out the highlights, the Capitol, the U., the Lyndon Johnson Library, the headquarters and huge market that is Whole Foods, the park by the river (is this really the Colorado as I'm told? How can that be?!) where there's a children's park and a crossing bridge under which the "world famous" colony of bats lives.
These bats exit their crevaces in a huge cloud every evening around sunset. The bridge when rebuilt included these as part of the plan to encourage them and protect them. They were thought to be a protectrion against a Typhoyd fever epidemic in the early 20th century and it appears to have worked, as it was much less severe in Austin than in other places.
Every evening under the gaze of thousands of human eyes the bats come out. I stay late to witness this and though it's a bit disappointing in that dark bats, even by the hundreds of thousands, are hard to see against the night sky, being with the people on the river bank, with the paddle wheel and private schulls and other boats plying the waters below, and the hundreds lining the railings of the bridge, it's a festive feeling to the end of my day.
I walk for several hours just taking in the sights and feel of the place. It is remeniscent of my time in San Francisco and once again I feel satisfied in conecting with this place by foot.
Eventually I notice I'm really hungry and stop in to have a 2:30 "brunch" which turns out to be Tex-Mex and quite good. It feels good to sit and after lunch wander over to the old hotel and up a grand stairway inside to a lounge area with settings of leather couches and chirs and bookshelves filled with hard bound books. I pick out one at random, a Clive Cussler mystery, and open it also at random. It manages to catch my interest and I read until I doze off. Some time later, voices passing nudge me awake. I decide the cool space in the middle of the hot afternoon feels right. So, I leave this venue and go to a small movie theater around the corner which is playing something I've wanted to see. It turns out that food and drink is served during the movie, right where you're sitting. In front of the seats and between the rows, there is a counter to put things on and an isle for the waitpersons to move to serve you. The preshow is Bevis and Butthead introducing home grown Japanese television comedy of the sort that involves people dressed in large rubber bea costumes doing bizar slapstic which is sometimes quite humerous.
After the movie, I wander down to the river where there is a rowing club and a pathway and also some pretty high-rent hotels. There are several bridges besides the one with the bats. It's peaceful to sit on the "dock of the bay". The railing along the bridge slowly begins to gather it's watchers, the sun goes down eventually peaking readly through one of the arches, a big dog jumps in off the end, kids throw sticks, and one or two stars come out. And the bats are finally flying. I'm glad.
Now I can go home. It's time. The drive just long enough to be restful but not so long as to pose a sleep-driving experiment. Killeen, TX. Who'd thought I'd call here home, even for a short period. Have you ever heard of Killeen? But, here's a footnote. My dear friend Marcy's sister was born here when her father was at Camp Hood in the "big" war.
At least, I think that's what she said. The other thing that's interesting is Marcy grew up in part on the same street in Bay Villiage, OH that my sister now lives. Maybe I'm part of Marcy's family and this is home. Naw (at least to Killeen)!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
One of the activities that goes with the role of Military and Family Life Consultantant (M-Flac for short) is to be with soldiers who are being deployed "down range". Today, for these soldiers, it's Afghanistan. We're being with them as they sit and stand and mill around waiting to get on the buses that will take them to the airport.
I did this for the first time a couple days ago.
What we do is more or less roam among them. We're just making contact - verbal, eye, and through the shake of a hand or a fist-bump, speaking with some, some just a head nod to acknowledge, "I can't say much really, but I'm seeing you." What I find myself saying is something like, "Where are you from (soldier, Sgt., Captain, etc.?)" Or, "What number deployment is this for you?" (Imagine that, that we're asking how many times they've been sent away to war! This is beyond the Vietnam experience for sure.), or, "What's your MOS?", and so on. Casual talk, normal talk which isn't really casual or normal even for the thrid-time, old-timer warriors (the oldest person I encounter is 49).
The experienc of being in suspended-feelings mode is palpable. Men and women sitting or standing next to their back packs, weapons hanging from shoulders or perhaps leaning up against a carry-on suitcase (or in one case resting atop a Victoria Secret bag with a pillow and an Teddy Bear stuffed inside), and so on. Some, knowing the drill, sit in collapsable chairs in the slim shade that the barracks cast in the late afternoon heat and humidity. Murmered conversations on the ever present cell-phone, now bringing the people at the other end into this place and moment in a way other soldiers in other times never could have. Young men and women intermingled with much older men and women. My kids among my friends.
This is my third rotation. This is my second. I was just about to retire and they got me. I'm 45. I'm 19. I'm going to drive amunition and weapons in convoys. I'm going be a grunt in the hills. I have no idea. I've been there before. My last rotation was Iraq. We're headed to Afghanistan. Can you mail this letter to my wife?
"Can you mail this letter to my wife, sir?"
"Yes, absolutely. I'll do it today. How is she doing with this rotation?"
"It's hard....." tears, unable to continue, quietly moving away to stand with buddies with his pain.
A father and grandfather.
Third rotation.
National guard from Phoenix, AZ.
A brother from home country.
A little while later I move to where he is.
"Give me your wife's phone number, I'll give her a call and let her know you're thinking of her, sending a letter."
"Would you?! That would be good. It's hard on her."
Big smile. Moist eyes.
I want to hug him and know it will be better not to right here/now.
Later, the call leads to a conversation about lonliness, duty, moving to Flagstaff.
A partner being brave, being worried: "So, he's off...."
Quiet pain.
"Do you have someone you can talk with?"
"You know, I've been wondering about that. I've been thinking I'd like that. I don't know how to find someone."
So, I give a number, we talk about her desire to leave Phoenix, how her husband wants her to wait until he returns, so they can move together from "the Valley" to Flagstaff together.
"Give me a call if you want, if you get up to Flagstaff this Fall," I say, going beyond what our protocol really allows. She's client, not a friend.
It just seems like the friendly thing to do.
My partner, shares/admits how she always feels like she wants to "mother" these people, to comfort and protect them. Moist eyes looking out over 166 lives waiting to get onto a bus to the rest of what may become for some, very short journeys. And they will get there together on one hand (we're with a National Guard Unit from Phoenix, AZ). On the other hand, it's a journey into the self. What's it all about, this life I'm living? A solitary journey.
My own experience in another time and another war allows me to feel a connection with this experience of theirs in a way that I can tell my partner doesn't and can't. In one way this is good, an instant bridge between me and them. In another, she can be present more clearly and allow it to be just their experience she's witnessing, acknowledging. I, on the other hand, realize that I'm using them to complete something of my own history. I'm seeing here in part myself. It's good that we are both here, a woman, a man witnessing, that we can bring our separate presences to this moment.
Looking back now, it is this that I see we are there to do. To witness their experience, their presence. And in doing this it is perhaps what one can really only ever give of value: I see that you exist and I am glad you do and to be here to let you know I know.
The words may be trite, sound so when we speak them. Yet, it is what we do anyway. And, just the fact that we have come out to see them off, even though it's our "job", I can see gratitude in eyes and faces. It is spoken out loud too: "Thank you, sir, for coming out." And it's meant. It has meaning. It is, I realize, what I have come here to do. The pay off is bigger than any job description or pay. I feel seen too.
I have this idea that somehow it may be that human beings create extraordinary circumstances which go beyond the daily buzz of worries and problems in order to come into a space wherein one can only manage to handle this moment, this one right here right now. "Disasters" and "tragedies", storms and war have a way of "bringing us together". Remember 9/11, how good it was to be able to share our confusion, pain, anger, saddness. So, in this, there is a certain connection with life, with others, with ones self, with "meaning" that is generally lost in the buzz.
I have felt and I have heard other former soldiers express a certain "strange" desire to "go back", a longing to be in a place/time/experience that at the time was what one most wanted to escape. I don't think it is the circumstances. I don't think that it is making war or being in danger that is the desire or longing. I think it has to do with the simplicity of simply facing life at it's most fundamental level - that of doing what it takes to be/stay alive and to help others do the same. All the other complications which daily life is full of drop away and it gets really simple. Just do what's infront of me to do. Just be here now. Trust eachother and ones self. It's being present to all that really is, this moment.
So, the soldiers walk past us, feet shuffeling, audible sighs and grunts as packs are picked u, a feeling of relief in the air and on faces, and in words. "Finally." The wait part of "hurry up and wait, now for this moment, is over.
Passing by them, we hear, "Thank you, thanks for coming out, thanks." Hand shake, fist bump, eye contact, smile. You're welcome. Be safe.
You ARE welcome. Besafe. Be safe. Be all that you can be (laugh).
Busses leave. Empty space bewteen the barracks, efluvia of water bottles, wrappers, and here and there a pillow or blanket or some personal item forgotten or left behind because there just wasn't room in the pack and nowhere else to put it.
It's a moment in which I feel both sad and lonely and blessed and grateful. It is life and we have all just done the best we could with who we are. I feel human and I'm alive. That's it. That's all. It's enough.
I did this for the first time a couple days ago.
What we do is more or less roam among them. We're just making contact - verbal, eye, and through the shake of a hand or a fist-bump, speaking with some, some just a head nod to acknowledge, "I can't say much really, but I'm seeing you." What I find myself saying is something like, "Where are you from (soldier, Sgt., Captain, etc.?)" Or, "What number deployment is this for you?" (Imagine that, that we're asking how many times they've been sent away to war! This is beyond the Vietnam experience for sure.), or, "What's your MOS?", and so on. Casual talk, normal talk which isn't really casual or normal even for the thrid-time, old-timer warriors (the oldest person I encounter is 49).
The experienc of being in suspended-feelings mode is palpable. Men and women sitting or standing next to their back packs, weapons hanging from shoulders or perhaps leaning up against a carry-on suitcase (or in one case resting atop a Victoria Secret bag with a pillow and an Teddy Bear stuffed inside), and so on. Some, knowing the drill, sit in collapsable chairs in the slim shade that the barracks cast in the late afternoon heat and humidity. Murmered conversations on the ever present cell-phone, now bringing the people at the other end into this place and moment in a way other soldiers in other times never could have. Young men and women intermingled with much older men and women. My kids among my friends.
This is my third rotation. This is my second. I was just about to retire and they got me. I'm 45. I'm 19. I'm going to drive amunition and weapons in convoys. I'm going be a grunt in the hills. I have no idea. I've been there before. My last rotation was Iraq. We're headed to Afghanistan. Can you mail this letter to my wife?
"Can you mail this letter to my wife, sir?"
"Yes, absolutely. I'll do it today. How is she doing with this rotation?"
"It's hard....." tears, unable to continue, quietly moving away to stand with buddies with his pain.
A father and grandfather.
Third rotation.
National guard from Phoenix, AZ.
A brother from home country.
A little while later I move to where he is.
"Give me your wife's phone number, I'll give her a call and let her know you're thinking of her, sending a letter."
"Would you?! That would be good. It's hard on her."
Big smile. Moist eyes.
I want to hug him and know it will be better not to right here/now.
Later, the call leads to a conversation about lonliness, duty, moving to Flagstaff.
A partner being brave, being worried: "So, he's off...."
Quiet pain.
"Do you have someone you can talk with?"
"You know, I've been wondering about that. I've been thinking I'd like that. I don't know how to find someone."
So, I give a number, we talk about her desire to leave Phoenix, how her husband wants her to wait until he returns, so they can move together from "the Valley" to Flagstaff together.
"Give me a call if you want, if you get up to Flagstaff this Fall," I say, going beyond what our protocol really allows. She's client, not a friend.
It just seems like the friendly thing to do.
My partner, shares/admits how she always feels like she wants to "mother" these people, to comfort and protect them. Moist eyes looking out over 166 lives waiting to get onto a bus to the rest of what may become for some, very short journeys. And they will get there together on one hand (we're with a National Guard Unit from Phoenix, AZ). On the other hand, it's a journey into the self. What's it all about, this life I'm living? A solitary journey.
My own experience in another time and another war allows me to feel a connection with this experience of theirs in a way that I can tell my partner doesn't and can't. In one way this is good, an instant bridge between me and them. In another, she can be present more clearly and allow it to be just their experience she's witnessing, acknowledging. I, on the other hand, realize that I'm using them to complete something of my own history. I'm seeing here in part myself. It's good that we are both here, a woman, a man witnessing, that we can bring our separate presences to this moment.
Looking back now, it is this that I see we are there to do. To witness their experience, their presence. And in doing this it is perhaps what one can really only ever give of value: I see that you exist and I am glad you do and to be here to let you know I know.
The words may be trite, sound so when we speak them. Yet, it is what we do anyway. And, just the fact that we have come out to see them off, even though it's our "job", I can see gratitude in eyes and faces. It is spoken out loud too: "Thank you, sir, for coming out." And it's meant. It has meaning. It is, I realize, what I have come here to do. The pay off is bigger than any job description or pay. I feel seen too.
I have this idea that somehow it may be that human beings create extraordinary circumstances which go beyond the daily buzz of worries and problems in order to come into a space wherein one can only manage to handle this moment, this one right here right now. "Disasters" and "tragedies", storms and war have a way of "bringing us together". Remember 9/11, how good it was to be able to share our confusion, pain, anger, saddness. So, in this, there is a certain connection with life, with others, with ones self, with "meaning" that is generally lost in the buzz.
I have felt and I have heard other former soldiers express a certain "strange" desire to "go back", a longing to be in a place/time/experience that at the time was what one most wanted to escape. I don't think it is the circumstances. I don't think that it is making war or being in danger that is the desire or longing. I think it has to do with the simplicity of simply facing life at it's most fundamental level - that of doing what it takes to be/stay alive and to help others do the same. All the other complications which daily life is full of drop away and it gets really simple. Just do what's infront of me to do. Just be here now. Trust eachother and ones self. It's being present to all that really is, this moment.
So, the soldiers walk past us, feet shuffeling, audible sighs and grunts as packs are picked u, a feeling of relief in the air and on faces, and in words. "Finally." The wait part of "hurry up and wait, now for this moment, is over.
Passing by them, we hear, "Thank you, thanks for coming out, thanks." Hand shake, fist bump, eye contact, smile. You're welcome. Be safe.
You ARE welcome. Besafe. Be safe. Be all that you can be (laugh).
Busses leave. Empty space bewteen the barracks, efluvia of water bottles, wrappers, and here and there a pillow or blanket or some personal item forgotten or left behind because there just wasn't room in the pack and nowhere else to put it.
It's a moment in which I feel both sad and lonely and blessed and grateful. It is life and we have all just done the best we could with who we are. I feel human and I'm alive. That's it. That's all. It's enough.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
It's quite an interesting experience to find myself inside the military culture/life and find that mostly these are just regular people living life pretty much like, well, civilians. I think I'm a little ashamed that this should be something of a surprise. I'm relieved, actually, to realize that it doesn't matter what my opinions are about the politics or morality of war in particular or in general, that it's not particularly useful or required in order to be of some use to our clients. There are no bumper stickers on the the vehicles. That turns out to feel friendly, as though it's not necessary to yell one's opinion from the back of one's vehicle in order to be present and accounted for.
I've also noticed that everyone from the Comanding General on out wears the same camoflage uniform and that they are really pretty cool looking, practical, useful, much more comfortible (looking, anyway), and I want one (without having obey orders to get it, of course).
The commanding general of this Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch (he actually invites soldiers of all ranks to call him Rick) seems to walk his talk about wanting to provide the soldiers with as much help as they need to be healthy doing their work. He actually cancelled physical training postwide for the first day of school to allow Soldiers with school-age children the oportunity to accompany their children to school. It would have been incoceivable to me from my experience that, except for maybe the plague or Christmas, maybe, they would cancel physical or any other training. Hmmm.
The Military and Family Life Consultant program, which is what I'm working with/for, was created out of an event in 2004 when the 1st Cavelry's redeployment from Iraq to the US was cancelled and their tour extended for six months. There was a recognition that the families as well as the soldiers would obviously be greatly affected (something which my experience of the military was surprising and even hopeful) adding to the already great stress of the year they just spent apart. This program was put together then and was perceived as valuable enough after the immediate need was met to be renewed and continued since that time.
It actually feels something of a relief that discussing the politics of the two wars we are engaged in are off limits for discussion with the soldiers, families, and amongst ourselves (at least at work). It is just about what is it that we can do to help these people.
Which isn't to say that that always happens amongst ourselves. Or that the nature of the military life doesn't have it's peculiar twists and turns on life. But, mostly the presenting problems are pretty much the sort which show up in any civilian counselor's office.
There's something else that I've noticed too about the nature of the military "culture" (which has sounded like an oxymoron to me until this experience) which I find myself admiring. It is a real sense and attempt to live up to the ideal that one is expected to live with integrity in one's relationships with fellow soldiers and ones family/personal relationships as well. It feels like it helps to bring a fundamental solidness to the container of military life. I've had spouses talk about how they have gone to their soldiers superiors (i.e. Sgts., C.O.'s, etc.) and those people have held the soldiers accountable, spoken as an elder, referred or brought them in to us, etc., in a way that isn't required but seen as part of their mission as leaders. This is literally supported in the soldiers "code" and sometimes it seems that it could be a useful presence in "civilian" life more than it often is. It doesn't require that anyone be part of a particulary belief system. It just defines how one is to behave within a culture, and is in this way kind of Samauri in nature. Maybe "be all you can be" has more to it than I have believed about the Army.
I've been resistent to actually allowing myself to acknowledge admiration for any aspects of the military culture. I've spent a lot of years remembering out of my own experience, which was one mainly of fear, then disalussionment, then saddness and anger. So, to find that I've come to feel this unexpected sense of approval, that I find a more human face showing now, is amusingly disconcerting. It helps that all the NCO's and Officers who used to look so old and tough now look younger, often WAY younger, and thus less scary to me. I think, actually, it helps to have grey hair. I had a soldier come up to me the other day and ask if I wasn't General Somebody or Other. Imagine that. It felt kind of, well, powerful. I don't think they'll let me re-up.
As for my work here, I generally will see three or four clients in a day, give a couple briefings, mayb do some phone contacts. We have a quota of needing to have fove direct and/ore indirect contacts in a day. My first client was actually a kind of baptism by crossfire, as it were. It was actually a couple and was on the morning of the second my second full day (they cut the new guy a break - I hardly knew where the bathroom was and I'd only been on-site a few hours). It involved addiction to crack cocaine, a terminal illness, reintigration after Iraq, infidelity, financial distress, four teenage step-children, and bad breath (well, that last isn't true but might as well have been). Welcome back to work, G, light of my life "retired" counselor. You thought a vacation maybe?.....!
In central Texas in August?! What was I thinking?
I've also noticed that everyone from the Comanding General on out wears the same camoflage uniform and that they are really pretty cool looking, practical, useful, much more comfortible (looking, anyway), and I want one (without having obey orders to get it, of course).
The commanding general of this Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch (he actually invites soldiers of all ranks to call him Rick) seems to walk his talk about wanting to provide the soldiers with as much help as they need to be healthy doing their work. He actually cancelled physical training postwide for the first day of school to allow Soldiers with school-age children the oportunity to accompany their children to school. It would have been incoceivable to me from my experience that, except for maybe the plague or Christmas, maybe, they would cancel physical or any other training. Hmmm.
The Military and Family Life Consultant program, which is what I'm working with/for, was created out of an event in 2004 when the 1st Cavelry's redeployment from Iraq to the US was cancelled and their tour extended for six months. There was a recognition that the families as well as the soldiers would obviously be greatly affected (something which my experience of the military was surprising and even hopeful) adding to the already great stress of the year they just spent apart. This program was put together then and was perceived as valuable enough after the immediate need was met to be renewed and continued since that time.
It actually feels something of a relief that discussing the politics of the two wars we are engaged in are off limits for discussion with the soldiers, families, and amongst ourselves (at least at work). It is just about what is it that we can do to help these people.
Which isn't to say that that always happens amongst ourselves. Or that the nature of the military life doesn't have it's peculiar twists and turns on life. But, mostly the presenting problems are pretty much the sort which show up in any civilian counselor's office.
There's something else that I've noticed too about the nature of the military "culture" (which has sounded like an oxymoron to me until this experience) which I find myself admiring. It is a real sense and attempt to live up to the ideal that one is expected to live with integrity in one's relationships with fellow soldiers and ones family/personal relationships as well. It feels like it helps to bring a fundamental solidness to the container of military life. I've had spouses talk about how they have gone to their soldiers superiors (i.e. Sgts., C.O.'s, etc.) and those people have held the soldiers accountable, spoken as an elder, referred or brought them in to us, etc., in a way that isn't required but seen as part of their mission as leaders. This is literally supported in the soldiers "code" and sometimes it seems that it could be a useful presence in "civilian" life more than it often is. It doesn't require that anyone be part of a particulary belief system. It just defines how one is to behave within a culture, and is in this way kind of Samauri in nature. Maybe "be all you can be" has more to it than I have believed about the Army.
I've been resistent to actually allowing myself to acknowledge admiration for any aspects of the military culture. I've spent a lot of years remembering out of my own experience, which was one mainly of fear, then disalussionment, then saddness and anger. So, to find that I've come to feel this unexpected sense of approval, that I find a more human face showing now, is amusingly disconcerting. It helps that all the NCO's and Officers who used to look so old and tough now look younger, often WAY younger, and thus less scary to me. I think, actually, it helps to have grey hair. I had a soldier come up to me the other day and ask if I wasn't General Somebody or Other. Imagine that. It felt kind of, well, powerful. I don't think they'll let me re-up.
As for my work here, I generally will see three or four clients in a day, give a couple briefings, mayb do some phone contacts. We have a quota of needing to have fove direct and/ore indirect contacts in a day. My first client was actually a kind of baptism by crossfire, as it were. It was actually a couple and was on the morning of the second my second full day (they cut the new guy a break - I hardly knew where the bathroom was and I'd only been on-site a few hours). It involved addiction to crack cocaine, a terminal illness, reintigration after Iraq, infidelity, financial distress, four teenage step-children, and bad breath (well, that last isn't true but might as well have been). Welcome back to work, G, light of my life "retired" counselor. You thought a vacation maybe?.....!
In central Texas in August?! What was I thinking?
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