I don't read Dickens for the plot or story line, but for the reveries of life as it once was, and perhaps again may be, lived and enjoyed, even in the heart of troubles and want.
"Their pleasures on these excursions were simple enough. A crust of bread and scrap of meat, with water from the brook or spring, sufficed for their repast. Barnaby's enjoyments were, to walk, and run, and leap, till he was tired; then to lie down in the long grass, or by the growing corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, looking upward at the light clouds as they floated over the blue surface of the sky, and listening to the lark as she poured out her brilliant song.
There were wild-flowers to pluck: the bright red poppy, the gentle harebell, the cowslip, and the rose. There were birds to watch; fish; ants; worms; hares or rabbits, as they darted across the distant pathway in the wood and so were gone: millions of living things to have an interest in, and lie in wait for, and clap hands and shout in memory of, when they had disappeared.
In default of these, or when they wearied, there was the merry sunlight to hunt out, as it crept in aslant through leaves and boughs of trees, and hid far down-deep, deep, in hollow places like a silver pool, where nodding branches seemed to bathe and sport; sweet scents of summer air breathing over fields of beans or clover; the perfume of wet leaves or moss; the life of waving trees, and shadows always changing.
When these or any of them tired, or in excess of pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there was slumber in the midst of all these soft delights, with the gentle wind murmuring like music in his ears, and everything around melting into one delicious dream."
~ Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, Chapter 45 excerpt
“She was hurt to find life made up of so many little things. At
first she believed most faithfully that they had a deeper meaning and a
coherent larger purpose; but after a while she saw to her dismay that
the deeper and larger things were merely shadows cast by the small.
So
she buried the whole great treasure of winged dreams and iridescent
shades under an oak-tree in the farthest corner of her heart, and
planted a bush of wild roses over it. A small grave of dreams.
Secretly
and silently she buried them, a little ashamed, as a burglar might be
who had long pursued some gleaming ruby necklace, and, having by
infinite stealth and risk obtained it, found that it was red glass.”
―
Barbara Newhall Follett,
Lost Island
“My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were
all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my
heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the
whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings,
iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before
the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”
~ Barbara Newhall Follett
What better for a Sunday brunch than homemade buttermilk biscuits and homemade strawberry preserves? I can make both, the best you ever tasted!
Coffee, fresh-brewed and strong.
An omelet? Whatever kind you like, but, trust me, you will fill up on biscuits and preserves.
After brunch, my dad would always relax in a sunny corner and read the Sunday paper, tossing me the funny pages so I could read Get Fuzzy and Calvin and Hobbes.
Happiness is the uncle you never
knew about who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep mid-afternoon,
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
The desert erases regard, wind plays on.
A mirror looks back to the future which has no face.
I’m a player for the war outside.
My name has killed me, fatherland desert land, no escape.
Do not forsake me!
I’ve become the most beautiful green dress.
Maybe you would not recognize me
when the Johnnies come marching home.
– after Snow White Joins Up by Klaus Friedeberger From Jill Jones, Fold/Unfold
After we saw what there was to see
we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father
waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need
a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.
Why do you want so much stuff?
he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear
my mother saying, as if that took care of it.
After she died I don’t think he felt any reason
to go back through all those postcards, not to mention
the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower
and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays
and lucite paperweights, everything we carried home
and found a place for, then put away
in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.
He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,
and when she was gone—why should that change?
Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?
I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler
in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.
It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,
lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.
I try to avoid thinking about politics and what's going on, but the witch hunts are becoming serious and ... .
Oh, well.
Better to just focus on the frivolous and foolish.
Here's a joke from a 75-year-old Fibber McGee and Molly radio show:
Wallace Wimple, "Wimp," as Fibber calls him, often provokes Sweetie Face, his domineering wife, who teaches judo classes in the Marine Corps. One
day, he told Fibber that when he asked Sweetie Face what she was doing she said she was practicing her weight-lifting and he said back to her, "'My goodness, you do that every time you get up
out of a chair.' And then when I regained
consciousness, she'd left the room."
AHAHAhahaha...ha...ha.... Well, I guess you have to hear Wimp tell it. Or, as Molly would say, "'Tain't funny, McGee!"
Aw shucks.
Here's an episode of the show from November 24, 1942, that I enjoyed. It's about women taking over men's jobs. Eight decades ago. Nothing new, is there?
Windy, wet and cold. And noisy. Yes, noisy. But being topside is better than being below, so stick it out as long as you can. Lucky guys whose ratings require them to work on the flight deck. They probably don't realize it, but these days are the best days of their lives.
“People ought to saunter in the mountains -- not hike. Do you know the
origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the
Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when
people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were
going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so
they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these
mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them
reverently, not 'hike' through them."
Each day seems to bring some new lurch toward totalitarianism. I don't understand what's going on at all, or why. I keep hoping we've reached the worst of it and from now on it will get better. But it doesn't. It just keeps getting worse.
I started re-reading Nora Waln's memoir of her stay in Germany from 1934 to 1938, The Approaching Storm. Things were fine, even optimistic, in the country in the early days of the National Socialist regime, but day by day, little by little, things got worse, terribly worse, until she and her husband had to flee for their lives. And she wasn't even Jewish, nor was her husband. He was an English classical musician, studying the great German composers, and she was an American Quaker of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction. Didn't matter. They had to get out or end up in a concentration camp.
How soon will that be true of us normies in these times? Will it really become true?
"I love working for Uncle Sam. Lets me know just who I am! If I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home!"
"I’ll tie back my hair, men’s clothing I’ll put on,
I’ll pass as your comrade as we march along."
I have my blood type written on both my boots, as well as written in indelible ink on my body.
"It's okay to be scared; you just don't want to show it." Sorry....
Sometimes nothing can be done, even though we try so hard.
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
I have added a new phrase to my vocabulary: "Drive on." Short for "Suck it up, shut up and drive on."
The 11th was a very bad day in Black Rock.
I am so tired.
“I am ready. I have repented my sins and soon I will be in heaven with Christ my savior. Now I must die like a man.”
I am in a place where to show your fear is worse than cowardice. It's a sin.
"The individual must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in a ground engagement."
I have officially seen the elephant and I am on the other side of the line now.
“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
I go to sleep with my cheek resting on the cool barrel of my M9. Wake me gently....
I am so tired. I am so very tired.
I may be killed doing this job. I've thought about it. I'm okay with it.
"And I heard as it were the noise of thunder, One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.'
And I saw."
"And I looked and behold, a pale horse. And his name that sat on it was Death.
And Hell followed with him."
"Though I ask naught else of God, I pray to Him: 'But these were boys, and died. Be gentle, God, to soldiers.'"
It doesn't hurt me. You want to feel how it feels? You want to know that it doesn't hurt me?
Sgt V was killed in combat on the 23d but they didn't release his name
until today, meaning his wife was notified of his death on Christmas eve.
I should be moving on in less than three months and, God willing, will never come back.
But I will never leave this place.
I am exhausted, I am exhausted. I am the magician’s girl who does not flinch.
I will take a lot of things with me from this Afghanistan experience.
The most important ones are inside me that no one will ever know about.
But I also have a spent and deformed bullet from an SVD, and shrapnel
from an 82mm mortar shell that have special meaning for me.
Can't sleep.
I no longer have anything in common with my old friends, colleagues and
acquaintances. Their lives and interests seem trivial and pointless.
"There’s this huge sense of urgency any time the helicopter flies. It’s such a violent machine. It shakes and it screams and it’s going some place and you see these guns hanging off the side and all these men with weapons."
--Sgt T
Well, never again for me. My last helo ride is ridden.
No matter how much I sleep I am always tired. Everything appears as if
it were under water. When people speak to me I don't respond. Not immediately. I have to force my brain to engage, grasp that some
action is required of me, determine what it is, compel my body to act.
So ... I have hearing loss as a result of exposure to an "intense impulse sound" -- that is, an explosion. I also have an exaggerated startle response and generalized anxiety. Oh, and trouble sleeping. And I will be having PCS and probably PPCS.
But it's all good, I still possess all my appendages, am not blind
or..., and my brain still functions manageably. I have a face. I am not... well, there are so many ways to still be alive yet.... I can't even write them down. They are too horrible.
Sometimes I think I am all cried out. But there are always more tears.
And not one of them can you let out. I have to be the strong one. But inside I am shaking...with anguish, despair and pain such as can
never be described. What do I say inside my head so often? "I'm sorry!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I'm sorry I couldn't stop this. I'm
sorry I couldn't help. I'm sorry you are in such pain. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you are going to die. I'm sorry I couldn't stop you from dying. I'm sorry I didn't know what to do to fix it. I'm sorry God did not answer our prayers. I'm sorry the universe is silent in the face of our cries for help, our cries to be saved, our cries to be rescued. Our cries not to die. I'm sorry I am so helpless in your need. I'm sorry you are dead.
But I will be along soon enough myself. The pain and the fear and the
unheeded pleading for help will engulf me soon enough too. Soon enough.
These are my boys. How can I abandon them? I've tried every thing I can to get my second tour extended. But no go. What will my days be like without carbine and pistol, PBA and Kevlar,
MREs and A-rations, without guys who clutch my hand so hard it hurts?
A week...a week...and then it's all over. On my exit flight I will
brush Sebastapol with my right sleeve, as von Schlieffen might have said. The thing is -- I don't want to go. I don't. I can't imagine not
being here. I want to be the last one out. Every day hurts so much.
Oh, who can understand?
"Nothing but hurt left here. Nothing but
bullets and pain and the bled-out slumping and all the fucks and goddamns and Jesus
Christs of the wounded. Nothing left here
but the hurt."
--BT
I should be thinking: "I made it through!" Through so much. So very much.
But I'm not.
See you when I see you!
“Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.” ― Sebastian Junger
The more training we receive, the more real it becomes. Watching clips
of IEDs exploding and what they can do to a soldier, marine, sailor, or airmen intensified these feelings. Working with wounded and many times
amputated individuals after they left the field at my command could not
prepare me enough for having the trauma happen right in front of me. Visions of gunshots, amputations, and blasts fill my dreams at night and
often wake me up as I wonder what in the
world was I thinking by volunteering and asking for this deployment.
“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.” ― Bram Stoker
I was reading an essay by Theodore Dalrymple, a thoughtful writer of conservative persuasion, who casually remarked in an aside that once you've participated in one orgy you've participated in them all. That implied that Mr. Moral Rectitude had not only attended one orgy, but several. That brought me up short and started me reconsidering my attitude to Teddy boy. But then, I reflected, he's just a guy after all, so what do you expect? *Shrug*
Then I thought what if Heather Mac Donald, also a thoughtful writer of conservative persuasion, had casually remarked in one of her essays that she had participated in orgies and was rather jaded about group sex. I expect that would be the last time she would ever write for any conservative publication.
Shooing my mind away from imagining Theodore and Heather in sexual congress amidst a pile of writhing bodies, I reflected on the way men always boast about how many sexual partners they've had and what sexual adventures they've experienced, yet condemn any woman they suspect of having had more than one sexual partner as a slut.
That frosts my cookies, as grandma used to say, because where do they think they get all those girls they proudly claim they've totally wrecked?
But then, thinking further, I realized that the most harsh criticism of me personally for things I have done -- or they thought I had done -- has come from women, and that criticism has been viciously personal and intended to do me emotional harm. I even once casually mentioned that in a brief stint as a waitress when I was in college that I enjoyed flirting with male customers and that doing so earned me nice tips. A woman who heard me said that she, too, had once been a waitress but she didn't have to demean herself to get good tips. See, I was demeaning myself by having fun with some guys on their lunch break. Thus, she established her moral superiority to me, little hussy that I was.
She couldn't grasp -- didn't want to grasp -- that I just liked my customers and enjoyed bantering with them. The good tips were merely lagniappe, not the reason I flirted. I like making people feel good and enjoy themselves. Much of daily life is a boring grind, sometimes stressful and often disappointing. So why not spend a few minutes putting a bit of fun into someone's life?
Phooey.
Anyway, I do suspect that, aside from patrons of professionals, the average male actually has fewer sexual partners than a reasonably attractive female. I have gotten hit on more times than I can count over the years, but never once have I hit on a man. It wouldn't even occur to me to do so. I've flirted, even teased, sure, but the interaction was always initiated in some way by the man, not by me. It's fun, but it's not serious; at least not in my case and I think the guys have understood it's just banter.
But had I been so inclined, I could have had sex with every man who ever hit on me. Could a man say the same thing about every woman he's hit on? I don't think so.
I was talking with my mother regarding the post I made the other day about her trip where she met my father. In it I mentioned that she had visited Egypt. She recalled that she left shortly after she arrived and abandoned her plans to visit other countries in the area because there was an uneasy sense that something was about to happen. Thinking back, she couldn't put her finger on it, but she just wanted to get back to Europe and then go on home.
She went to France briefly and then decided England would be safer if something happened and she couldn't get back to the States. Not long after she arrived, the Yom Kippur war broke out and things got grim, even in London town. She stayed through December before returning to the States, only to encounter the OPEC oil embargo and the first so-called oil crisis. Grim times.
London, 1973
My father was assigned to one of the carriers of the Sixth Fleet flying an F-4B when his leave was over so he was right in the thick of things. I looked up what the Navy was doing during that war and was surprised to discover just how close we came to war with the Soviet Union. I found this passage in one article (link below):
Soviet destroyer so close during Yom Kippur war.
The Soviets rode herd on the American vessels so aggressively that
Adm. Daniel Murphy, the Sixth Fleet commander, sent a semaphore message
to his Soviet counterpart asking him to adhere to an accord obliging
their vessels not to point guns or missiles at the other.
As tensions mounted, Adm. Murphy reckoned the chances of the Soviet
squadron attempting a first strike against his fleet at 40 percent. (In
the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy put the chances of war
at between one in three and even.) Adm. Murphy, in an interview with
this writer a decade after the event, said that if he had detected
Soviet preparations for a strike there would have been no time to
consult Washington before taking action. If his fleet survived the
opening exchange, he said, he planned to hunt down and sink every Soviet
naval vessel remaining in the Mediterranean.
The Soviet commander, Admiral Yevgeni Volubuyev, was meanwhile
preparing scenarios of his own. Lacking air cover, he planned, if the
crunch came, to strike first at the American aircraft carriers,
disabling them before they could launch their planes.
In the US Naval War College Review in 2004, Lyle J. Goldstein and
Yuri M. Zhukov quote from a personal diary kept by the former chief of
staff of the Soviet squadron, Capt. Yevgeni Semenov. Dubious about the
chances of winning “the battle of the first salvo,” as he called it,
Semenov mused that “(The squadron’s) attack groups need to use all
weaponry –missiles, artillery, torpedoes, rockets – the whole lot, since
it is unlikely that anything will remain afloat after an air strike. We
are kamikazes.” Unlike the Cuban missile crisis, the world at large,
focused on the land battles, remained ignorant of the superpower
confrontation at sea.
The Soviet squadron had 52 ships when the land war began on October
5. The Sixth Fleet initially had 48 vessels, including two carriers --
the Independence, then in port in Greece, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt
in Spain. The Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Murphy to avoid any move
that could be construed by the Russians or the Arabs as direct
involvement in the conflict. The US Navy made a point of announcing it
had no ships in the war zone.
As the land war continued unabated, nerves in both fleets frayed. The
solitary Soviet destroyers that normally shadowed the carriers –
“tattle tales” the Americans called them -- were reinforced by heavier
warships armed with missiles. Although ranking officers had never before
been noted on the tattle tales, the Americans now became aware of two
admirals on the ships following them. The Americans, in turn, kept
planes over the Soviet fleet prepared to attack missile launchers being
readied for firing. Both sides were aware that their major vessels were
being tracked by submarines.
It's hard to believe that only weeks before the US and the Soviet Union were on good enough terms that American tourists could travel across the whole country virtually unhindered. Things may be bad now, but they were truly terrible during the Cold War. It's amazing there was no World War III. If that was avoided, maybe we can avoid war with China and solve our own problems and move on to better times.
There were wild-flowers to pluck: the bright red poppy, the gentle harebell, the 
