ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT

 

I don’t know when Kurt Vonnegut wrote “Wailing Shall Be in All Streets” but it is his harrowing account of the bombing of Dresden as someone who was there and miraculously survived.  I did not know such a thing existed.  Like many, I assumed his statement on that matter was exclusively laid out by way of his brilliantly mad novel “Slaughterhouse-Five”.  But here is a short straightforward account that was previously unpublished in a collection of such writings put together in 2008 under the title “ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT”.  

Speaking of SH-5, I find it fascinating that he chose to wrestle with such a horrific experience through a pseudo-science fiction novel that may or may not be science fiction, though it is certainly a mix of fiction and nonfiction.  He opened the door to others who may have had traumatic experiences that could not be approached head on but required some kind of back door or sideways approach to blunt the horror of the thing, like seeing a skilled psychoanalyst.  Or maybe it is simply a more effective way to explain the unexplainable.  I’ve read that Tim O’Brien cites SH-5 as an inspiration for his own wrestling with war experiences in a fiction-nonfiction hybrid.

I had my own moment as a medical officer deployed to Iraq that was a moral crisis of sorts and evaded processing for years until I finally found a way to get it out by way of a poem (and thanks to “So It Goes” journal for helping me share it with a wider audience).  It is not an easy or straightforward process and tends to be ineffective or fall flat if simply recorded in a journalistic style of facts following a rigid chronology.  

A friend of mine when I was in my twenties had experienced a traumatizing event as a Marine pilot-in-training when the jet he was training in crashed during take off and the pilot was killed.  He wrote a short novel to process his experiences surrounding the event using elements of magical realism and attempted to get it published.  He eventually self-published it and I bought a copy only to discover it was nearly unreadable in how poorly it was written and conceptualized.  But at the back of the book he provided a straight forward account of the accident much like Kurt did in “Wailing Shall Be in All Streets” and it was actually pretty good.  In retrospect I can only assume my friend took Slaughterhouse-Five as his inspiration, though few have the genius and persistence of a Kurt Vonnegut to pull it off.

Regardless, I think Kurt would have encouraged my friend, and myself for that matter, to keep writing and let some of that suppressed stuff burble to the surface where it can be recognized and handled (otherwise it has the potential to perpetrate mischief by creating traps and pitfalls that we continue to blindly fall into).  In this way it can be ARMAGEDDON, but truly in RETROSPECT.  

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The Paschal Procession

 

Light your light 

and take a walk.

The world needs you

to shine in a line

showing the way

to the sublime where 

you are growing.

Shine on knowing

you are loved

and needed like 

a seed that springs

forth from the dirt 

and finds a way to 

bloom out of the hurt.

***

Into the Sun

 

I dreamt I drove into the sun

and all my friends were there.

And not just the living ones 

but those who died from despair.

We danced and sang within 

the waves of a plasma flow.

Inexplicably joyful, the how 

and why we did not know.

It was the mystery of existence,

a manifestation of the Divine.

No one felt they deserved it so

reciprocated by being kind.

***