Ghost in exile

After 364 days an officer pinned red and yellow campaign ribbons on me. I caught a freedom flight from Saigon to Alaska, ran across a frozen tarmac in thin khakis for java and flew to the City by the Bay.

“Anybody want a steak?” said a sergeant processing arrivals.

“Screw the steak. Give me a new dress green uniform. I’m out of here for a flight to Colorado.”

I became a ghost in exile. No one spoke to me. I understood their reticence, fear, guilt and awkwardness seeing me in a military uniform.

Passengers were anesthetized by their life and media propaganda and TV images seeing the dead come home in black body bags. Prime time madness sold soap.

I remembered Samuel at the 265th, “Better than going home to abuse, derision, scorn, apathy and unemployment.”

I’d seen things they would never believe. They averted their eyes with social indifference and I understood. They’d remained static in their work, eat, and sleep routines.

I’d shifted my consciousness with quantum precision. I survived a transforming life experience.

You die twice. Once when you’re born and when you face death.

Surviving a year in a macabre police action zone where an imperialist government tried to impose a Catholic leader on a Buddhist people gave my life new meaning.

It taught me impermanence.

One life - no plan - many adventures sang with clarity and awareness. I create or destroy my freedom.

In my dream I hike past a crude sign hanging from rusty concertina wire at a deserted firebase:

Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.

I locate normal in my portable lexicon.

Normal is someone you don’t know very well. Like yourself.

I used to be somebody else but I traded him in.

ART

Ghost Stories

Greetings,

In today's New York Times I found my comments included in a section called "Ghost Stories." I would like to thank the editors for selecting my piece.

On October 22, I posted an entry called BEDLAM AND HEALING. It was about the NYT and their "Home Fires," opinion section where Brian Turner, a Vietnam veteran posted his essay and poem. I'd read this and entered a comment and later read all of the postings, numbering 163 at that point.

Here is the entire piece and a link to the site. Read more...

+

Hello Brian and Travelers,

I am a Vietnam veteran, author, English teacher and photographer living in Ha Noi after completing a teaching job in Indonesia. I felt it was time to “return” to a place where, as a green 19 year old, I was really on the ground.

I served with the 101st at Camp Eagle near Hue. I needed to get a sense of place and perspective. Nature has reclaimed all the land. Only the spirits and ghosts and memories remain.

I went to the Phu Bai airport. The yellow and green small simple cement building sits next to an “International” box. On the ground I found a discarded paper baggage handling tag. On one side in all caps it said, "EMPTY." I put it in my pocket.

‘Yes, ‘ I realized, ‘this completes the picture of my returning.’

As I wrote in my novel, “A Century Is Nothing” when I returned to San Francisco from Saigon heading to Denver they gave us a new green uniform.

It was a strange flight to Colorado. I grasped the significance of being a ghost. No one spoke to me. They averted their eyes. Maybe I smelled like death, evil incarnate, a green silent demon. Maybe all the passengers were afraid because I represented their worst nightmare. I was invisible, just like now.

Fortunately my “homecoming” was brief, then I continued to Germany where I finished my military time. Two years later while attending the University of Northern Colorado insensitive students, knowing my history, called me a “baby killer.” They had no idea. I didn’t absorb their sense of anger, frustration and illusionary ignorance.

Brian’s poem is a truthful insight how it feels to be invisible after a war. How leaves and rain and medicine birds are all. A cleansing and healing ceremony indeed. 

Act 1

(Editor's note - this will be published as Room For Rent on the side bar. It is also available at Scribd.) 

September

“The leaves are falling fast,” I said to a ghost.

“They are falling far from the tree,” the ghost said.

“Yes, they are dancing,” I said. “Dance is about process, becoming, the passage of time. Shiva symbolizes the union of space and time and indicates creation. This is why dance is one of the most ancient forms of magic.”

“Magic is universal,” the ghost said. “People wear masks to hide their transformation, seeking to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy. They are free. Do leaves really fall far from the tree? It’s hard to say. Did you see a diamond light off a leaf this morning? It reflected an elegant universe.”

“Yes, the diamond reflects 10,000 things.”

“What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that,” the ghost said. “There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle, it’s a circular

movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Really?”

“Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Fire purifies,” I said.

“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”

“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”

“Ah, I see language in space. The word is beauty. The Greeks said it was order.”

“Speak to me,” the ghost said. “Tell me a secret. Plant a seed in my garden. Something glorious for spring. Eternal material with regeneration potential. Turn old soil. Give me a metaphor for digging.”

“They say grief for the dead was the origin of poetry.”

“What are your choices?” the ghost asked. “Choice is a powerful word.”

“Initially I chose to feel resentment for their lack of responsibility. I had to deal with my resentment. Why did I feel resentment? It was because of deception. My lack of knowing. Clare’s lack of truth. Her mask. I was angry I didn’t see behind her mask sooner. I was blind. I forgave myself and started to see.”

“Were you really angry or were you confused, sensing the sadness? What did you see?”

“I sensed the sadness beneath the surface. How they tried to fill up their emptiness. How their containers were bland and empty.”

“Is this really true, their containers were empty?” said the ghost.

“They were filled with anger and fear. I saw how they never learned. How their destiny brought them together intheir misery. How the two of them were on this endless negative spiral of energy.”

“They forecast their death?”

“I’m afraid they may end up killing themselves. It’s the chance they’ll take when they get desperate further down the road. The choice they will make. This is the way, their nature. How I process it. How I paid attention to their pain and suffering, their loneliness.”

“What do you mean? Please don’t talk nonsense. Let’s not have this conversation in the abstract. We have no time. Turn your hourglass over and talk. Remember we are all death deferred. We are all orphans sooner or later.”

“Ok, here’s the play,” I said, “a story inside a story with a through line. The inside is the outside veiled in mystery. I made a choice inside the puzzle. I am not saving anybody here.”

“Yes, I see your CPR accreditation is up for renewal. I’ve read your relationship resume. You’ve had your share playing many rescuing roles. Ok, then, stop the bleeding and start the breathing. Three compressions near the sternum. You know the procedure. It’s not about justice, it’s about procedure. You’ve always been here, wherever here is, haven’t you?”

“Sure, I’ve always enjoyed passing through incarnations. This is my nature.”

“Tell me a story. If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage. I need some entertainment, some drama with character development, arc, conflict, resolution, direction and movement. A through line,” said the ghost.

Metta.

A Tomato Based Culture

From Fujian, China to Ankara, Turkey (a kind of fowl) to Bursa along the Silk Road with Doner and Pide, all the sliced and diced tomatoes, all the bamboo baggage filled with laughter and forgetting inside the smashing of utensils and wash and wear drip dry neon holiday flashing factories along metro subway tracks where world weary

pedestrians completing a simple sentence with a full plate of delicious shoppers dancing inside fire breathing ovens stoking love's fires before racing home to mother, father, sister, brother all wearing traditional anxiety values around heavily medicated ma-scared necks handing someone change, your fragile receipt for paying

at the cosmic bowling alley for strikes and spares and did you know the great father liberator has a train car parked forever at the main station, a gift from Adolph, the Further and it was all imaginary, this T place where idle men stood around looking bored and unemployed, uneducated drinking brown tea

after artfully massaging a microscopic silver spoon around the rim, deep into the universe of sugar stars clanging metal against a small glass destroying cubes manufactured in a filthy factory - so an inspection engineer whispered in her strict confidence - don't use the sugar she whispered across a plate of pasta on a chilly Ankara night before they went to a wedding in Ulus, the ancient Roman village, deep in an underground cavern filled with musicians, dancers, and children

gypsies played anvils

far away from shy lovers holding hands under the table inside the rising sun of their desire, their passion for yawning bamboo chairs where two elderly women in multi-hued headscarves smoked exploding drops of water from plummeting icicles onto tiled roofs above the cafe where a ghost scribbled in shadows burning his fingers to see the why eye and the falling water drops were music to his ears

Metta.