Sometimes you find yourself wondering
why things go the way that they do;
and often, you realize that
they had to go that way. But that’s
looking back when you are in the
midst of it, you aren’t able
to look back, yet.
“Tell you something else Chuck,”
between the cold and smadge being pissed the
whole day was turning ugly and it wasn’t five A.M.,
so my sense of listening increased.
“Smadge, it goes like it goes…” Hey that was
intellectual wasn’t it?
“These folks leading this mess don’t have a plan.
If they had a plan we’d know what we’re supposed
to be doing, but we don’t.” He said it from that
base of experience that lets you know he knew.
“Sure, that makes sense, only we have to try
and do what we can to get the platoon ready.”
“Now see chuck, that’s why I got you on staff
you get it. What we need to be doing right now
is getting our guys and gals ready to go and
fight another skirmish. Only those folks runnin’
this mess aren’t capable of diggin’ their heads
out long enough to give us a word about how that
is going to go.” I could hear his blood pressure
rising and his temper coming up.
It wasn’t going to be long and smadge would
be talking about what people with no morals
would do someones mom, and I really didn’t
like that conversation, so I tried, all the time
to keep him just below the threshold. Don’t
know if you have a situation like that?
When she smiled at me it melted my day, and
there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, maybe
in my mind those times in the past flooded into the
present and left a mark on it, whether I liked it or
not, it was there and apparently there was no
escaping it. The past had a power that could
not be cured, folks talked about curing it, but
a past is a past, and it isn’t about being cured,
it is about coming to peace with it, somehow
getting that past to lay to rest in your present.
Every time she smiled at me, that was over.
Why do some people cause a turmoil in your
soul? My friend would say that it is because you
choose to let them have that power over you,
I’m not so certain that is the case; I’m not so
certain you don’t get that choice, but when it
comes it doesn’t look like a choice, it looks like
anything else. When she smiled it was to everyone
a smile, it was to me; a power in my life that I
neither wanted nor needed, and yet, there
it was. According to Hindu beliefs there are
hungry ghosts which can consume you. While
anyone not being a Hindu, not believing in ghosts,
might raise their eyebrows on that one; when she
smiles, I hear a rustling of the winds of ghosts,
they come to consume my desires and turn my
path from where it could go to somewhere else.
Maybe that’s why the past kept coming back?
“Well finally, took ‘em long enough,”
We were told to fall out, which meant to get into
a formation outside the barracks. This was it,
we were in the cold again. Germany is a beautiful
country, but the cold, there isn’t any way to make
that go away, nor to forget how it moves through
all that cold weather gear, right into your bones.
“Smadge is this it?” I wasn’t afraid, just wanting
to know.
“Who knows with this bunch of sock grabbers…”
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