A friend of mine is dying. He may be gone by
the time you read this. We called each other brother, and meant it.
He is dying of the war in Viet Nam. After many missions, he had never been hit by any bullet. But then a water buffalo got him.
They were headed back to camp when it surprised them, and they pumped the creature full of lead. At the last moment, it came back to life and charged my friend, tossing him on its horns again and again and again.
Given up for dead, he got evacced and put back together by sheer chance.
(continued below)
But that was 35 years ago. Get over it.
I met him a few years later and didn't think much about his wounds until one day when we were all going swimming or something. I don't remember the details, but I happened to see him naked. His abdomen looked like a casserole gone horribly wrong. How could he come back and father children, was the first thought that ran through my head.
He experienced incredible pain daily, but it was never enough for the VA to grant him any sort of compensation. With both his pain and his raging, overwhelming, all-consuming PTSD untreated year after year, he sought some relief where he could find it. Who could blame him? Anything to stop the nightmares waking and asleep.
And so it went, year after year. Eventually, twenty years late, all the endless hoops were jumped through thanks to the best woman in the world bar none, a wife that fought for him every single day. (Think of those who have no advocate.) He started getting some compensation. We started hearing words like pain management. Hey, welcome aboard. We got that covered already, the best we could.
Too little, too late. The promise to veterans broken and denied.
Eventually, he found a little measure of happiness in a new place, surrounded by a few people who understood. I believe he found some satisfaction in the thought that his children at least would not be part of the same machine that ate him and spit him out. Silly that way, believing in progress.
And now, way too soon, it's over. I don't know what the certificate will say. It will probably say something like: liver failure due to . . . . .
It should say: He beat the odds for a while. It should say: Died of complications from the Motherfucking War in Viet Nam.
Think you've seen too much of the Iraq nightmare already? It's barely begun.
A new wave of rage is rising in me tonight, swamping everything that's gone before. I swear on Douglas' beautiful kind eyes to dedicate myself to stopping this madness before it consumes any more of our children.
Nowhere to Hide
I went to our local music festival yesterday. It actually reminded me more than a bit of DailyKos. Who are these amazing people anyway, who presume to set Tennyson to music, and do it beautifully? Who sandwich in a mini-lecture on the history of smoke-jumpers in an introduction to a ballad about doomed firefighters in 1949? Who bowl you over with Djangos' Minor Swing on autoharp, because it just occurred to them that it might work? Who think you should follow them on a journey from Carolan to Patti Smith?
Two thoughts:
So much of the heritage is about workers and their daily lives. Miners. Cowboys. Sailors. Cotton mill girls. People who worked with their hands and shoulders and brains and tried to make things better when they could. The Pound A Week Rise
Good choice for an escape for the day.
Except when a reference to Katrina elicited boos, applause, and prolonged jeering and cheering til the band pleaded for calm.
Except when Columbia, Roll On - as I sat looking at the dammed Columbia behid the performers - was followed by a song advocating breaching the dams, and the audience broke out in argument with itself, disrupting the performance.
Except when a local kids' fiddling group dedicated a song to the troops, and some applauded, some did not, and heated words were exchanged.
No resolution, but still a Coda of sorts finished the day and left me in tears: the angel clarity of Teresa Morgan's voice leading an a capella version of Jean Ritchie's Now Is the Cool of the Day.
My Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my garden so fair
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the grasses green
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
This earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day
Then my Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my pastures so green
You may live in this garden if you will feed my sheep
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Then my Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my garden so free
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the people free
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
O this earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day