Archives for category: Logic & Reason

Without Warning

September 3, 2013 //

Life is actually like that, most of the time, isn’t it? “Without warning”, I mean.

I woke during the night to the sound of a partner’s voice in the dark…something about thunder and lightning and unplugging things. It made sense to me, wrapped in the surreal world of sleep and dreams, and although I wasn’t sure in-the-moment quite where/when I was… all seemed well with the world. I remembered my father unplugging things during thunderstorms. I did feel a vague moment of envy as sleep sucked me back into the land of dreams… thunderstorms are not common here, and I rather like their wild fury and drama. The nearby rumbling of thunder, real thunder, was the last thing on my mind as I returned to sleep.

morning sky

I woke to sodden gray skies, heavy folds of clouds as the dawn broke seeming to promise more rain soon. My coffee sucks this morning. The beans are from a bag that didn’t get dated, and did get… old. Beans from July seem ‘vintage’ by September, and really not very good. lol. The resulting coffee (I assure you it does not qualify as ‘espresso’) is strong, a bit bitter, and although considerably better than fondly remembered cups of military coffee in another time and place… it still sucks. lol. It’s not a big deal, I’m pretty adaptable as beings go.

I contemplate, for the moment, that handy quality about myself, adaptability. I didn’t always recognize it in myself. I didn’t always understand what a tremendous strength it is. I struggle with being spontaneous – I’m more of a planner – but when things break down, go awry, drift off plan, or simply turn out differently, I generally do pretty well in spite of my desire to plan – because I adapt easily. The down side of adaptability is that I sometimes forget to mention to others that something is broken or not working as it ought to… because I am simply working around that! An example of what I mean would be a laptop I had for work years ago; the keyboard was not sufficiently robust for me, and keys would pop off regularly and the IT guys would glue them back on, or whatever it took to fix them. It was a regular thing. Eventually, the ‘o’ key popped off in a more permanent way… it was some time before I did anything much about it, because I had quickly learned to type using language with fewer ‘o’s (yes, yes I did. lol) as well as slightly changing my keyboarding style so that an ‘o’ resulted in a very specific key strike that hit a very specific spot on the missing key’s location. It slowed down my typing a bit, but was more nuisance than impediment.

This post is pretty irrelevant. Frankly, this morning I am simply enjoying some quiet. Watching day break through the window with this unsatisfying cup of coffee, and ‘getting my head right’ for the work week. Usually after a long weekend, I’m a wreck, frantically wanting to get back to work and stressing weird details that don’t actually matter – like ‘that one thing I said the other day’ to someone relevant to something, that by the start of a new week has developed into a tiny demon all its own, named ‘you’ll probably get fired for that one!’ It’s an illusion, I know, since it generally turns out to be something no one else remembered at all. This morning is different. I am content after a weekend well-spent. We wrapped it up yesterday quite pleasantly, watching movies together, laughing, and enjoying the easy familiarity of chilling with family at home.

A pleasant long weekend – without warning. It doesn’t really ‘look quite right’ to see ‘without warning’ at the end of a comment about something nice, does it? Still, pleasant days are just as likely to come up unheralded, without a calendar entry, no RSVP necessary – aren’t they? Far more likely, as I consider my own experience, to have some bit of warning ahead of something really bad – like ‘duck!’ or ‘take cover!’ or ‘we’ll talk about this later’. Awesome stuff, and nice days, usually just happen in my experience. That got me thinking about how often I may get in my own way of having a great day – by giving myself an unnecessary warning about imminent danger – that isn’t really there. Small stuff like those quiet internal reminders about someone who is grumpy in the morning… does it cause me to see them as being grumpy in the morning when they aren’t being grumpy, too, because I have warned myself? Something to contemplate on the walk to work – expectations, early warning systems, and setting myself up for failure by preparing for the worst, and failing to be open to the best.

It’s a lovely Tuesday morning after a stormy Monday night. Heavy gray clouds that threaten rain, also promise a cooler day, don’t they? 😀 Today I will go forth into the world without expectations, and without warning. ;-D

Tags a brand new day, after the storm, early warning system, mindfulness, perspective, ptsd, sunrise, TBI, tuesday morning

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

I, Me, Mine

September 2, 2013 //

It is a pretty morning, and Dave Matthews sings songs of love and life while I sip my morning coffee. My loved ones are home from their weekend getaway, and returning with them, the tension and stress of everyday life, notably absent while they were away. I am considering that, and perspective, this morning.

Much of my PTSD is related to family and romantic relationships, and associated with trauma over time, and small ‘inconsequential’ things that somehow destroy my sense of balance and calm very suddenly. Fears that overcome me are often based on some historical detail that results in my utter uncertainty about whether or not I am still ‘rational’, whether my here-and-now experience is ‘real’. The rapid swings between paralyzing panic and trapped-animal rage result in wildly unpredictable behavior – most of it unpleasant. One of my highest priorities right now is really getting that under control. Strangely…’getting it under control’ is turning out to mean ‘accepting myself’, and my feelings, and not exerting so much control; giving up on forcing myself to comply with some arbitrary standard of performance in the face of my own suffering. In the past, the ferocity applied to ‘forcing myself to be okay’ resulted in splitting headaches, problems with my blood pressure, anxiety and panic attacks, and fits of uncontrollable crying that would sweep up out of nowhere, leaving me feeling like I had, on top of everything else, failed to ‘control myself’.

“Myself”. My self. My self. My self. Damn. Who am I? Where does my experience begin, where does it end? What is the boundary between what is me, and what is someone else? You’d think an adult would have this one mastered by 50. Well, sometimes the answers to my questions, the understanding I seek, the resolution to a challenging problem, are inconveniently buried in the basics. So, this weekend, in addition to being about ‘perspective’, is about applying an understanding of perspective, an experience of perspective, to the question ‘who am I?’

Sorting out the difference between what stresses me, and me stressing over other people’s stress, turns out to be more complicated than I expect. I’m learning to ‘make room’ for my feelings, and learning to accept myself. I’m also having to learn to take those new tools, and accept my loved ones, and ‘make room’ for them to have their experience, without that urgent need to intervene, ‘make it right’, ‘force it to work’, or ‘fix things’ sweeping aside the very things that make us individuals sharing a relationship – our unique and individual experiences that we are having, and choosing.

Sometimes words by themselves are not enough for me to gain real clarity. Maybe I don’t have the right words, or enough words, or maybe I don’t choose them well, or define them with sufficient clarity. I have painted a number of self-portraits over the years, and studies of my state of being in the abstract. This morning it occurred to me to take a look at them all, as a body of work with a story to tell – a story to tell me.

“Portrait of the Artist’s Tears” 1984?

My shoddy bookkeeping tends to indicate this is my oldest surviving self-portrait. A small work on watercolor, my recollection is that I was hesitant to make my unhappiness with life too obvious, for fear of making it a great deal worse. The cries for help just kept coming…

“All I Am” 1985

Slipped between sheets of rice paper, stored in a box, shoved into the back of a closet for many years, “All I Am” stayed quietly hidden, along with my truths. i struggled with myself, with my experience, with my PTSD – although I didn’t know then, what I struggled with. I knew I wanted something else, and I knew my relationships were a core concern…

unfinished “Brownie” 1986

I clung fiercely to the illusions I loved most, hoping that somehow wishing hard enough would be enough…

“Waiting for Morning” 1986

It wasn’t enough, and I didn’t yet have the tools I needed to find peace, or clarity, and my cynicism and ancient pain overwhelmed me. Futility became an everyday experience, and romantic love did not exist in my experience in any recognizable form…

“Marriage” 1987

Grim, bleak landscapes figured prominently in much of my work by 1987, and expansive vistas of far away places. I wanted to get away, but I lacked certainty about what I was running from, or to. It wasn’t all tears and trauma, and even our worst trials may be interrupted by some wonderful moments. Marriage didn’t treat me well, and love was pure fiction as far as I could tell, then, but…

“Lovers” 1991

I found love for the first time, later on. It, too, was a momentary interruption on a very scary ride through life, then. It was something to hold onto for later, and that would mean so much…

“Joy” 1995

“Joy” is still my singular favorite self-portrait, because it speaks to me of that moment of wondrous realization that love exists. It was a mundane enough moment, at the dining table, watercolors out, painting simple sketches of moments and feelings, and suddenly… joy, desire, love, passion, and a feeling of being filled with something powerful, something beyond me, and something that was – and is – profoundly positive and transcendent of pain, and chaos and damage. If I had any thought I could ‘take it with me’, this is a painting I’d want buried with me – it is the best of all that I have within me.

Life is complicated stuff, and I have rarely been able to ‘hang on to’ the best bits. I struggled for years, and did what I could to ‘keep it to myself’, even suppressing as much pain as I could through Rx psych meds. The next self-portrait I painted was from within an altered state so profound that I got lost, all the pieces of me separating as mists and fogs, dissipating and leaving me alone, and naked with who I had become…

“Separated from Self” 2010

I began making profound changes to, well, almost everything, shortly after that point. Life as it was couldn’t be borne much longer, and it was obvious, even to me. I can’t take credit for being a willful adult being making reasoned changes… I’ve got to be as honest as I can on that one. I began grabbing any foothold and laying waste to my moment, to my status quo, hanging on to what felt like a change for the better with real ferocity, and discarding anything that hurt… and of course, circumstances, life, and the free will of others in my life threw assorted changes into the mix, too.

“Communion” 2010

I experienced profound love – that magical, amazing, wondrous sort of love often promised, rarely found. Of course, life rarely limits our unexpected circumstances to the ‘magical, wondrous’ variety…

“A Ratio of 13 to 1” 2011

A sudden, unexpected, unsought career change resulted in anger, insecurity, and… freedom. I was suddenly free to make radical new choices about that pesky ‘who am I?’ question, free to redefine myself, willfully, as I came off the psych meds and regained my soul, and my intellect, and began to develop a sense of self that didn’t rely on any evaluation but my own. Damn, that sounds awesome when I read it. Actually, it sucked. It sucked a lot, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve undertaken, and more than 2 years later I am still working on it – although it is now as much a joy and delight, as a challenge. There will never be enough ‘thank you’s’ to give to the dear ones who have been there for me throughout this incredible period of growth.

“Taking Another Look at Me” 2011

I have re-examined myself from a number of angles since then…

“His Bitch II” 2012

Who am I as a lover? As a partner? What is sex to me, now? Can I put my demons to rest?

“Agent of Chaos” 2012

Can I ‘get it under control’? Can I ‘figure it all out’? What’s wrong with me? I continued to struggle, and somehow the things I expected would help me… data… analysis… writing in my journal… seemed to be making it all so much worse. I was ‘spinning my wheels’ and not getting anywhere… I stopped writing. I stopped painting. My soul seemed to be stalled. Hormones. Relationship challenges. Choices and actions that didn’t align to values I thought I had. The chaos and damage were taking over, the wreckage in my head was becoming the experience in my life… I felt utterly lost.

“Broken” 2012

At the end of 2012 I painted “Broken”. I was trying to say… something. Trying to explain what it felt like on the inside, to communicate something I couldn’t quite seem to put my finger on… and as 2012 became 2013, I found out about the brain injury I had received as a tween. (I still don’t remember it in any concrete ‘this is my experience’ sort of way… but the crack in my forehead refutes any desire to wish it away now.) The new information, and beginning therapy more appropriate to my experiences and needs, kick started 2013 as a year of growth – and real healing.

These are who I have been. I am somewhere new, now, getting to know this amazing being that i am… facing my world, my life, my experience with real hope, and real healing… I look at these self-portraits now, and it is tempting to be frustrated that I wasn’t listening to me, but I am done punishing myself for what has been, and waltzing endlessly with my demons.

I painted “Perspective” this weekend. It isn’t as much a self-portrait as a meditation, a reflection on a bigger picture, a useful skill, a necessary step in the process of ‘knowing’ – or unknowing – what is, and what is not, and what may be. I am 50 this year, and there is a lot to celebrate, to observe, to experience. Soon… a new self-portrait.

I am learning that ‘who I am?’ is not a question to be answered with words. 🙂

Tags Art, art imitating life, be the change, listen to a story, love, mindfulness, ptsd, self-portraits, TBI, tell me of your home world, who am I?

Categories Art, Brain Injury, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, Uncategorized

Another Perspective

August 31, 2013 //

Multi-tasking personal growth…

It’s been many days since I had enough ‘bandwidth’ to write… the world is, as is so often the case, teetering on the brink… of something. Again and again I find War on my mind, conflict, emotion…and growth. Because I am so prone to metaphors, even War reflects back onto my ‘right now’ experience. Learning to stay ‘in the moment’ is not as simple to master as it is to take on as a practice. So I continue to practice. “Taking care of me” is a more complicated puzzle of choices and observations than I’d like it to be, and there too, I get plenty of opportunities to give it another try. I still make choices that don’t serve me well, more often than I’d like. I still struggle to be fully who I am, and feel accepted and understood by people who matter to me…and by myself, too. Change requires effort and, oddly, perspective.

…another perspective.

Today I am working on “Perspective” from another angle. Art.

I’ll talk about the inspiration, first. My life felt like it was unraveling quickly at the start of the year. The upheaval of moving mingled with my chaos and damage (that I’d managed to avoid dealing with in any notably successful way). I had spent decades allowing myself to be heavily medicated, out of desperation, but against any potential ‘better judgement’ – and went off them one by one, but without any real understanding of how that experience would go, after so many years. I found out I’d had a pretty serious traumatic brain injury as a ‘tween’, that I’d never been told about, didn’t remember, but had always had evidence of… and it explained a lot of lifetime weirdness, and odd impairments and eccentricities. My PTSD flared up, and news articles about the high rate of suicide among military veterans over 50 started looking like suggestions… and I was approaching 50, fast. It was a very bleak bit of my life… (If I had had a different perspective, perhaps that would not have been the experience I had?)

I was at a place in my journey where my perception was that my life was entirely filled with pain, that the chaos and damage could not be overcome, that I ‘couldn’t do any better’ and that failure was inevitable, and a permanent state of being. I still had lucid moments, and I still existed alongside people who love me. In better moments it seemed obvious that things ‘couldn’t be that bad’. I wanted more data. I wanted to change my perspective, to know something different, and to ‘see for myself’ without the complications of the wreckage in my head. I was inspired to measure my experience in some way; “Perspective”- in acrylic, on canvas, with 3D mixed media, and of course – it would glow.

It became, over time, more than an art project – and it spoke to me. Now it is time to finish it.

Every journey has a starting point.

I had chosen the move to our new home, all of us together, as a not-entirely-random starting point – it was a big event that caused me a lot of stress and interrupted pretty much every routine imaginable, and it was in the context of struggling with that fairly every day sort of change that I found out about my TBI, and started to understand what a big deal that had actually been for me all along. My basic concept was simple enough: I would use two glass canisters, and add items to each, representative of events and experiences, day by day from that point until I turned 50. I would watch my life unfold as data points in a visual display – positive events, happy moments, exciting and fun experienced, powerful epiphanies, and positive developments all in one canister – the other would hold the hard times, the angry moments, the pain, the tears, romantic spats, discord, confrontation, PTSD freak outs, stress, grief – and there too, epiphanies and growth, because those come sometimes from what hurts us. I didn’t want to be bleak, but I figured, at best, the outcome would be a draw – pretty nearly balanced between the tough times and the good times. It was already February when I started – so I carefully went over my journals, notes, and emails to friends, looking for documentation of the details, and ‘building the foundation’ of “Perspective”. I was more confused than surprised to see that even from where I was standing in that moment, the wonders and joys, the good bits, seemed the larger part of life, and it wasn’t a small matter – it was obvious. That sat rather uncomfortably in my consciousness for many weeks as I added to one or the other canister… because, the good times were still a much bigger piece of my experience than it felt like. I started questioning a lot of things about my understanding of the world around me, about my ability to understand my own experience, about what the hell was really holding the chaos and damage in place, after all this time… and I kept adding to each canister, day after day… and I kept observing… and I kept meditating.

My intention was to meditate on the progress of events in these canisters, until my 50th birthday, then use the elements on canvas to finish the project. That’s where you find me now, considering my life, and my “Perspective”.

202 days of my life in “Perspective”

There’s certainly more to say about perspective, in general. The pictures don’t lie – I may be in pain, my PTSD isn’t behind me, yet, and hormone hell is often just one misunderstanding away from seemingly unprovoked tears or anger – but I enjoy life, and life has a lot of joy and wonder to share with me. My anger, the wreckage in my head, my struggles with chaos and damage are actually a pretty small part of my experience – so much so that it all has to be placed in a single canister to be visible at all. I have the suspicion, untested as yet, that if I combined the contents of both canisters into one, it would be tough to pay much attention to the dark bits at all, because there is so much light. Light is a powerful metaphor; illumination, gnosis, clarity…

Canvas is waiting.

Tags an artist's perspective, art as a tool for analysis, falling apart, fragile vessels, gnosis, hormone hell, humpty dumpty's shell, illumination, learn to swim, life and art, meditation, menopause, mindfulness, perspective, picking up the pieces, ptsd, TBI, tears and tantrums

Categories Allegories, Art, Brain Injury, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50

Choice and Change

August 22, 2013 //

Have a cookie…let’s talk.

coffee or milk?

Today I woke up to a world filled with haters and trolls, and people who think there are acceptable reasons for violence or that there are excuses that mitigate treating other people badly. I woke to a world where human beings employed in productive work for a business are treated as a commodity or a ‘necessary business expense’ to be minimized at any cost, and to a government that sees killing as a more worthy expense than feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and housing the homeless. I woke to a world that treats women and people of color as having less value than the rapidly dwindling pasty white ‘majority’. I woke to a world where rape victims are treated as having some blame in the crime committed against them, and people are taught to take with force what isn’t given freely. I woke to a world where objecting to what is objectionable and demanding change can get a person a prison sentence, and one where people in uniforms can lawfully commit murder. I woke to a world where the concept of a living wage is sneered at by a lot of people who don’t have to worry about covering their bills. I woke to a world where telling the truth is a criminal act, and kindness can get someone killed.

Funny, in a not-so-funny way, this is what we choose. Every day. It’s a big culture, a big world, and there are a lot of ideas about living life. Choices are made, and often more poor choices than great choices are made in the name of ideology, dogma, tradition, religion, precedent, futility, frustration…but they are choices, made by people, and in some cases made by people who actually have the potential to do more, better, and who choose not to.

I have sometimes been that person who could have done more, better, had I chosen differently.

We each have greatness within us, however humble our beginnings.

The individual commitment to doing it differently changes a very small piece of our world – but it does change that very small piece. So…today I will change the world. A very small piece. Will you?

What will the world be like tomorrow, if we choose wisely today?

Tags be the change, carpe diem, compassion, do more better, life and love, love not war, mindfulness, OPD, peace on earth, pick your battles, ptsd, TBI, The Big 5

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Summer, Words

Words and Warfare

August 17, 2013 //

It is a quiet morning. The earliest rays of sunlight begin to fall on the garden. The house is quiet, everyone sleeping but me. Understandable – their late night out rates some sack time, and I crashed quite early after a busy day dealing with my PTSD, heavy traffic, and building some furniture after dinner for a diversion, which was very calming. (Thanks, Ikea!)

It seems I have reached a point in my journey that healing not only seems possible – even likely – it is happening, and in the happening of it, my heart and soul and broken brain are starting to torrent historical pain to the forefront of my consciousness – as though ‘now is the time’ and everything wants a shot at being dealt with. (Maybe with some coaxing I can get my demons to take a number and queue up in an orderly fashion.) 😀

Pretty morning, sunny, mild, probably quite hot later (for Portland – my Fresno friends will be laughing their butts off, perhaps, because down there 85 isn’t ‘a hot day’)… and I am learning that whatever baggage I am dragging around through life, it is life itself that is what matters most. These precious few minutes and years…this is what I’ve got. The most tender brief life of a flower has more value to the me, now, than a single word of any ideology attempting to express its meaning. (The meaning of the life of the flower? The meaning of the ideology? You choose; works either way for me. )

I have spent too much time at war, again. I didn’t realize I would be, going into it, and having been taken by surprise I left myself undefended from old business and thoughts of war. PTSD is a funny thing. An individual’s vulnerability to lingering PTSD varies (this is the current thinking, and it seems consistent with my own experience). A lot of people go to war, and come home apparently untouched. (I say apparently, because I’m highly doubtful that sane, aware, reasoning people are ever untouched by an honest look at war, however they may present themselves after those experiences.) For me, I went to war ‘righteous and justified’ – a young patriot, sure of myself and perhaps even eager to ‘defend the nation’, and more or less willing to buy into the propaganda and rhetoric, even knowing that much of it had no substance or truth. I felt we were ‘right’, and I did not challenge that feeling with rational thought. I had doubts. Even then, going to war in a foreign country, to kill human beings for the ‘crime’ of disagreeing with our ideology, didn’t sit well with me. I am old enough to have been a cultural participant during the Vietnam War years. Still, I went. I soldiered in a professional way, when orders came I followed them, when it was time to go home, I went.

“The Edge of Iraq” oil on canvas 1992

When I got home to the world, people who knew me said I had changed. I said I had not. I couldn’t see it or feel it from within, I only knew that so much of what had mattered before, didn’t matter anymore. The values of many things were clear – and very different. I didn’t understand the change was within me. I knew I would not go to war again willingly. I knew I was capable of killing. I knew I was no longer willing to take a human life unless it was clearly and obviously to save my own. I knew things. Unspeakable elements of war that the civilian world never sees, doesn’t want to see, and sure doesn’t want brought to their attention. I quietly went about the business of packing it all away. I carried my military footlocker from place to place for years. It had a pair of my Desert Storm BDUs in it, some of my well-thumbed field manuals, a small cassette player that had gone there and back, and actually still worked in spite of the fine pink-ish sand clogging the works, and it had the smell of the desert and the smell of war clinging to it, and contained within. If I chanced to open my footlocker, which was rare, the smell would bring it all back – and I would focus on the nostalgia, the first package from home, perhaps, or the sheaf of letters from my Granny. I didn’t think about War. For many years I have comforted myself that this piece of who I am did not contribute to the fucked up state of affairs inside myself, that the wreckage was other things, other pain, and war was no lingering part of my experience. I had myself pretty well convinced, too…

It was a lovely bit of self-deception while it lasted.

I’ll be saying more about War, I guess. Once the words start to flow… you know? The thing is, I know in advance that the words are wasted. People think they know what there is to know about War, when they haven’t been. They grasp firmly to some notion, some ideology, some bullshit fed to them by the media, or a respected friend or teacher, and they hold on for dear life. They do not want to know. Not really. I found myself looking across the great emotional and intellectual divide, Thursday night, between experience and ignorance, and found myself quickly becoming enraged and wounded – because I could not effectively share what I know. Writers write – see, I’m doing it now – and beautiful turns of phrase attempt to build the bridge from the knowing across the chasm to the ignorant (“the horrors of war”, “the war machine” “band of brothers”…) but how easy is that when the greater hope is that no one need ever know?? I, myself, usually respond to inquiries about my war experiences by minimizing and making a vague reference to M*A*S*H. Worse still, I am often overlooked as having any relevant insight – because I’m female – in spite of the truth that I went to war, too. Frustrating to be dismissed by a civilian on the basis of what they ‘know’ about war, in the face of actual knowledge. I suck at frustration.

That conversation mattered more than I realized and I spent that night awake, thinking about War, the realities of war, the lies about war, the rhetoric used to justify war, the outcome of war… and when dawn came, it was clear that I am not finished with War. Good thing it was a Friday, a day off, and a therapy day. I spent a lot of time talking honestly about war, for the very first time. No amusing anecdotes. No vague references. No excuses. No withholding. No minimizing. No running away. I have apologies to make – to friends and comrades who also know the face of War, in one capacity or another. More than one of them has urged me to open up, to say something, to do something. One of them makes his every day experience about protesting ongoing warfare. I actually do understand. He has experiences he doesn’t want to share, too, and shares them with the world to make the world see. He also knows it isn’t possible to force awareness or understanding… he does it because it is the right thing to do. I get it.

Anyway, there will be more words about War. I have a voice, and a tale to tell. For now, it will have to suffice to say that i am unimpressed with the purported effectiveness of warfare, in general. Historically, war seems to have very little lasting benefit to anyone at all. It is an insulting wasteful endeavor whereby the very privileged few can send the children of those without the power to refuse to go, off to foreign lands to kill human beings they do not know in support of a cause that is most likely a thinly veiled grab for power that will never benefit them personally, and will most certainly stain their souls with the changes that come of killing other human beings. What right does a government have to murder by proxy? To destroy human beings by using them as weapons to kill other human beings – and how is it not murder? We know innocent lives are taken, and instead of being horrified we justify it – ‘collateral damage’. When we err and kill our own, we still justify it with more words to make it acceptable (“friendly fire”). At what point do we recognize that murder is not a tool for success? That War never ever ends – and never ever works? Some part of me never came home from the war – and for a lot of us, never does. We don’t just kill ‘the enemy’ when we go to war, we kill our own people, we destroy their hearts, and souls, and bodies – and lie about being able to rebuild them, support them or heal them.

Do you ‘support our troops’? Then don’t send them away to kill and die, because the effort is wasted, and meaningless to those who do not know War. Honor the broken hearts, and broken bodies and broken brains of all of history’s soldiers – bring them home. End the war. Every war. All the war. Just fucking stop killing people you don’t know for things they didn’t do themselves at the request of legislators who are such pussies they can’t do their own fighting for themselves. They don’t deserve to benefit from those sacrificed to the Gods of War.

“Kuwait: Oil Fires” oil on silk, 1992

Tags bring them home, don't kill me bro, endless war, gods of war, ptsd, support our troops, TBI, war crimes, who are the good guys?

Categories Anxiety, Art, Brain Injury, grief, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Words

Without Warning

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I, Me, Mine

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Another Perspective

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Choice and Change

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Words and Warfare

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