Sane Inside Insanity: MY LATEST MILITARY CAREER

sabato, luglio 12, 2008

MY LATEST MILITARY CAREER

I'm currently landing on Utah Beach and I don't expect it to be over before Tuesday, Wednesday if I can scrounge another day. Omaha was rather relaxed. I unpacked Optimus, and he is ***gorgeous***, but I haven't had time to transform him yet, which gives the measure of my stress.

Is it wrong that I totally root for the Allies (want101stpinwantwantwant) but relate to Rommel? Nobody has forced me to suicide, but I'm dealing with a multiple front war, knowing the only hope for my country is an honourable peace to be obtained with a victory in Normandy, and yet knowing, probably with my own historic point of view, that I'm going to lose everything. Ah, and also my boss kinda sucks.

It always comes back to that. My life is a war with myself. I'm not complaining, I'm doing my best, but I long for peace. I think it's quite transparent that I don't do drugs and don't know anybody who does, and that I dedicated "Why do you do it" to myself, namely the self-distructive way I approach my work. I can't seem to get out of it.

I saw "Wanted" and identified myself with Wilson too. I'll post a review after I find my "Fight Club" review which I hope is not lost. (Old computer woes.) I had my car fixed, in a series of Mr. Bean scenes. I know that to those nice elderly gentlemen who are my mechanics I must be funny and loveable in a clumsy kitten kind of way, and they root for me and are protective of me, and I react with great flair and humour, but inside I wanted to dig a foxhole and never get out of it. When I brought the car to them I went home and collapsed on my bed and slept. Is this possible?

Unbelievably, my TF saga is going on, one scene here, one scene there. That's a war story too. And not for children. The themes are heavy. No wonder I'm so into it now.

And after Utah there's Midway, and Apocalypse, and the Maestro (not Future Hulk, but the painter whose biography I'm editing), and Fitz. I don't know how to get to September. Add a social life that is beginning to look more like a Klingon virility test, and you have the full picture.

I will not leave you in our private Vietnam
You, my own soul
Like all those people who just let it be...

QUOTES

Heart shall be bolder,
harder be purpose,
more proud the spirit
as our power lessens!
Mind shall not falter
nor mood waver,
though doom shall come
and dark conquer.
(The Battle of Maeldon, translated by Tolkien)

He who has a treasure, or a demon in his heart, cannot hide it. (King Theodoric the Great)

I' mi son un che, quando
Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo
ch'e' ditta dentro vo significando.
(Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio)

The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you'll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it's the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever. (Hannibal Lecter)

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. (Ernest Hemingway)

Would I embarrass you? Yes, it is possible. You see, I... I am crazy. I take the newer medications, but I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites. Like my appetite for patterns. Perhaps my appetite to imagine and to dream. (A Beautiful Mind)

Night gathers, and now my watch begins.
It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands,
father no children.
I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.
I shall live and die at my post.
I am the sword in the darkness.
I am the watcher on the walls.
I am the fire that burns against the cold,
the light that brings the dawn,
the horn that wakes the sleepers,
the shield that guards the realms of men.
I pledge my life and honor to the Night Watch
for this night and all the nights to come.
(GRRM)

Never criticize a person until you walk a mile in their shoes (Atticus Finch)

A warrior for peace is no less a warrior (General Korrd, unwittingly reminding of Yitzhak Rabin)

What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed? Only innocent lives, Peter. (Sirius Black)

Whatever makes a soldier sad will make a killer smile (Leonard Cohen)

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't. (John Coffey)

Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, - as wild, untutored things are forced to feel - Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! (Starbuck)

I have dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (Charlotte Bronte)

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me? (Karen Blixen)

Do not you recognize me, Dumas? I am the rearguard of the Grande Armee. I have stood at Kovno, and thrown the last muskets in the Niemen. I am Marshal Ney. Give me a bowl of soup. (Attributed to Michel Ney).