Death and Memory in Moscow

I’d been in Russia a month 

when Alfred Schnittke died.

Well before the motorcade had

wound its way alongside the

Moscow River to Novodevichy

I’d seen the crossless cupolas

proclaiming some portent.

Gale force winds had swept the city

a fortnight prior and stripped

the magnificent onion domes 

of their Christian significance,

like time traveling back to 

the days of the Soviet Union

when stars rose as crosses fell.

I sat at the base of a statue, bronze

Gogol brooding over my shoulder, 

my nose buried in the Moscow Times.

Maybe  he was curious as to who 

would be joining him at this famous

cemetery for authors, musicians,

playwrights and poets.  Yes, poets.

***

The Bully

My son has recently been experiencing a right of passage reserved for many a middle school student, ie,  “The Bully.”  In his case it has been more annoying than alarming, but something we are working through to help him navigate the rough waters of transitioning from being a child to being an adult.  In human development terms middle school is an incredibly dynamic time both physically and mentally with changes occurring at a bewildering rate.  In a strictly physical sense, there are simultaneously boys and men mingling in classrooms and locker rooms with an imbalance of power that is a set up for the larger boys-cum-men to use their size in inappropriate ways.

Which takes me back to this time period in my own life in a small town in Southern Indiana.  I experienced the traditional bully in a boy who I’ll call “K.”  We were on the junior high basketball team together and he had it out for me for God-knows-what reason.  I was one of the shortest kids in my class until mid-high school and also exceedingly skinny.  K would probe at times with his figurative jabs, but there were factors that mitigated his ability to do any real harm.  It never devolved into a full on physical altercation, but he did what he could to make my life as unpleasant as possible. 

One example of the many little offenses was during a basketball practice.  Our small school had a disproportionately large basketball gymnasium with concrete tiers and wooden bleachers encircling the court, a space that was difficult to heat.  As a result, we oftentimes wore sweats during practice in the winter.  That particular day I was sporting a new Adidas-type athletic outfit  that I had found at K-mart and convinced my parents to get me for my birthday despite the expense.  It was our school colors and comprised of a shiny black zip-up jacket and pants with red stripes running down the arms and legs.  In my mind it looked a lot like what NBA teams wore for their pre-game warm ups.

We were in a scrimmage and K and I had been split up as we were the two main guards on our team to handle the ball.  At some point I got a break away lay up, but K caught up to me when I thought I was all alone.  I went up for the shot a little lackadaisically and he came down hard on my back sending me crashing down to the wooden floor with his full weight on my back.  Ostensibly it was a defensive maneuver to swat the ball, but obviously it was so much more than that.  In today’s rules it would have been a flagrant foul and gotten him ejected from a game due to its malicious intent.   I remember being down on all fours feeling shook up and hearing him laugh.  My knees were throbbing in pain and I expected the coach to do or say something to K, but he didn’t.  When I finally got up there was a hole in the knee of my suit which hurt so much more than the actual physical pain or even my pride at having had my shot blocked.  In one fell swoop he had completely deflated any joy I might of had at having something so cool.

But these encounters with K were not what came to mind when I heard about a boy putting my son in a headlock.  What came to mind was an incident that involved a different boy who would better be described as a boy-man.  I’ll call him “T.”  He was a relatively new addition to our class and was built like a linebacker.  He had curly blonde hair and loved to go shirtless during gym to show off his muscular and well-developed body.  He towered over me and I had little reason to be around him unless forced to do so in gym class.  Needless to say we did not run in the same circles.

The day in question we were all out in the field next to the gym playing organized Two Hand Touch football.  An upperclassman from my sister’s grade was in charge of us and, like the coach, did not seem to be looking out for our safety.  I imagine he didn’t think it was part of his responsibilities or he was too intimidated by T to do anything.  What shirtless T was doing was whenever someone on our team had the football he would run us down and knock us violently to the ground by slamming his two hands down on our backs.  So much for Two Hand “Touch.”  

The first time he did it to me I ate some grass and it made me so mad that the next time he had the ball on a play I closed in quickly and two hand touched him so hard on his bare back that the slapping sound echoed off the school walls.  I walked away without looking at him but then suddenly something hit my hand so hard that my whole arm jerked forward.  My hand was stinging and I saw the football rolling on the ground.  I turned to see T huffing and puffing in anger.  He’d thrown the football at my back as hard as he could and it had simply clipped my hand.  If it had hit my head or back it could have done some more serious harm to include a concussion.  He loudly complained about the hit to the upperclassman in charge and I told him he couldn’t just go around knocking everyone to the ground in Two Hand Touch football.  The upperclassman, who had not intervened when T was knocking the snot out of everyone, told me not to do it again.  As far as I was concerned he was a ball-less chicken.

The period ended and we all jogged back to the locker room to change back into our clothes.  As I sat on the bench in front of my locker and rubbed my hand, my fellow classmates filed past behind me, but one of them stopped briefly and leaned over my shoulder and said in a low voice, “Don’t back down to T.  If he tries anything we’ve got your back.”  I never had to utilize that help, but it was nice to know it was there.


***

Consolations

I hate being on call
on the weekends, but
if I keep my eyes peeled
and my heart is open
there are consolations.


***

Particular as Pathway

The faces wash past on the city street

infinitely varied but somehow all the same

in the blinking blur of an indifferent eye.

I am looking for that one familiar face that

will give all the others meaning as well,

the particular as pathway to the whole.

When I see it coalesce from the swirl

of humanity a bright spot forms in my 

otherwise dreary and dead existence.

It’s a focus that longs for connection, to be 

tethered to someone that keeps me from

floating off into the cold isolation of space.


***

A Bag of Bullets

Deployment becomes a reality.

The plastic case houses an M-16 rifle and I am checking it in with my duffle bags at the Nashville International Airport.  The sergeant who brought me down from Ft. Campbell wishes me luck and returns to our base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.  I have to catch up with my new unit which has been deployed for six months of a 12 month rotation in Iraq.  I tell the airline employee checking my bags what is in the case and he asks me to open it and show him that the weapon is empty.  

He is visibly curious about the weapon and asks questions about the type of bullet it uses and other technical aspects as to its functioning.  This information is unknown to most medical officers such as myself, but I’d served a few years as an infantryman in my early twenties and that kind of information had been drilled into me.  I politely answer his questions and grab the charging handle to lock the bolt to the rear so he can see that the chamber is empty.  When he is satisfied I hit the release and the weapon jerks in my hand as the bolt slams home.

***

There is a two hour layover in Amsterdam where I am free to roam the airport.  I have a friend who lives in the Netherlands and has been a great source of support in my conflicted existence as a physician, soldier, and (poor) Christian.  He is unable to meet me at the airport for this brief window of time, but then I see someone at a departure gate talking to an airline employee that I can almost swear is him.  It is like a mirage in the desert where my mind creates features that may or may not be there.  He is an older gentleman with a ruddy complexion and graying hair that is thinning but with a full beard.  I stare at him intently, willing it to be true.  Is it him?  Is he looking for me?  I move in closer and he turns in my direction.  I see he is similar to my friend, but not the same and I feel a return of the heaviness that affects me both in body and spirit.

***

I step off the flight at Kuwait’s main airport wearing civvies and sporting a light beard.  I’m greeted by a sergeant on this end of the trip who drives me through the city at night and then out into the desert for a few hours.  He feigns curiosity, “What’s with the beard?” a bit of a smirk detectable in his voice.  I explain I have been traversing international airports and did not want to stand out as a target.  That shuts him up.  

We arrive at the transition base sometime after midnight and I am dropped off at an empty troop hanger that can house hundreds but it’s just me and a single forlorn cot set up in a corner.  It is cold, but that will change when the sun comes up.

Sleep is fitful.  Dreams are hard to quantify.

Morning finds me disoriented and still alone.  I take a “combat shower” (get wet, shut off water, soap up, quick rinse, get out) and reluctantly shave my beard.  I am not Special Forces after all.  It is stifling hot and I can barely breathe as I walk the base and check in with the appropriate personnel, my M-16 like an albatross around my neck.

The time is off by several hours from what I am used to but there is little separation between night and day here with incessant activity around the clock.  It is sometime around 2am now and I can’t sleep, so I put on my PT uniform and shoot hoops on an outside court that sits in the middle of a cluster of buildings that, as it turns out, are filled with carrels for watching movies or playing video games.  Entertainment in limbo is essential for survival, apparently, though I tend to enjoy passing the time by reading.  A few sleepless soldiers show up and a game of 21 gets started in the cool night’s breeze.

***

Places like this in the Army are interminable.  They are holding tanks to transition soldiers to their particular units where they may have to stay for hours, days, or even weeks while an unseen hand moves up and down the system to figure out when and where to send them.  Time becomes meaningless as typical reference points simply cease to exist and the brain is fatigued as a result.  The sleep-wake cycle becomes like a wheel that has become disengaged from your car and disappeared into a ditch.  

Fifteen years prior in Korea as a young soldier in the 2^nd Infantry Division it was an enclosed area known as the “Turtle Farm” used to corral and house the new soldiers arriving in country.  It was next to the main drag on base and soldiers driving or walking by would see us gazing out forlornly through the chain link fence and taunt us with “Turtles!” (a Vietnam era term for replacements who were perceived to be slow in coming).

***

I eventually find myself on a fumey cargo plane headed to a base just outside of Tikrit on a former Iraqi airbase.  One of the buildings there functions as our clinic.  I arrive late at night and am offered water pulled from a massive pallet of shrink-wrapped plastic bottles of it.

Over the coming weeks and months I explore this desolate landscape.  It is a flat expanse of dirt and sand that stretches in all directions.  On the way to the chow hall I pass a stand of trees planted in rows that are dead or dying.  Rusted pipes connected to defunct pumps can be seen poking up through the friable ground no longer functioning to water this manmade grove.  A little farther down is an outdoor soccer stadium surrounded by a muddy track, the stands pocked with shrapnel scars and crumbling in the desert. 

***

Once again I am thinking about my weapon.

Officers are issued a 9mm pistol that can be carried unobtrusively in a shoulder harness, but I was late to the game and so all the 9mm’s were accounted for.  As a result, I was given an M-16.  Once you are issued a weapon it must be kept in your possession at all times.  No one thought to issue me bullets when I arrived in Iraq and I did not ask for any.

The thought of carrying a weapon designed to kill people is appalling to me on so many levels.  A sea change of ideas and priorities separates me from my time as a young infantryman now that I am in my thirties, a physician and father.   As far as I am concerned it is simply an elongated piece of metal meant to remind me of decisions made by my younger self who I have become estranged from.  I have learned to find other uses for it, though.  

The Colonel and I are walking the road to the chow hall for dinner.  The sun is sinking below the distant desert floor and painting lovely swaths of orange and pink in the sky behind the stadium.  I step off of the road and tell him I want to take some pictures of this silhouetted scene.  He seems a little irritated, but humors me.  The light is too low for a clear shot with my little camera and I cannot stand still enough to keep it from coming out blurry.  That’s when I experience an epiphany.  I shove the barrel of the rifle into the dirt to stabilize it and sit the camera on the flat butt that would normally fit into my shoulder.  I am now able to get some clear shots.  The Colonel sighs and softly grumbles, but this is a unique opportunity to capture something beautiful in this godforsaken place.  It is unfortunate his stomach is obscuring his view.                           

***

It is half way through my deployment and I have been tasked to transfer to our headquarters on the outskirts of Mosul.  The Combat Support Hospital unit there is returning to the States with its attached psychiatrist and the new one needs a fill-in.  Have shrink, will travel.

The Black Hawk helicopter sweeps us up over the perimeter fence and I feel my stomach flip flop into the territory of Iraq proper.  The landscape continues on as a flat and washed-out beige for quite some time, spotted only with the occasional village whose buildings and houses look like something from Biblical times.  I see a solitary robed shepherd moving across open land with what appear to be goats in tow.  Mountains appear under us an hour or so into the flight.  They are full of rounded peaks, ridges, and ravines.  My eyes rove to find a single flat spot for an emergency landing if needed.  There are none.  Mosul appears soon after the mountains and I feel the helicopter begin to bank over the Tigris River.

Our unit commander is a stickler for details which helps her fit into the Army nicely.  It is an essential skill in an organization with such a high turnover of personnel.  At some point she realizes what others have overlooked.  I do not have any bullets in my possession.  She is pissed about this.  She is pissed I wasn’t issued any in Tikrit.  She is pissed I did not seek them out when they were not forthcoming.  She tasks her armorer to issue me the prescribed amount of ammunition and I soon find myself in possession of a plastic bag filled with at least ten pounds of loose bullets.

I carry them to my hooch, clear out a space in the back of the cabinet where my gear is stored, and cover them with a flak jacket.  Not a single one will make its way into my rifle to be fired and find purchase inside another human being.  That is not my role here and I will not be forced into it.  RIP bullets.

The Church is a Hospital

It is a hospital for the spirit

where the Great Physician

works tirelessly to heal and

nourish the sick and dying.

The priest is his assistant

and helps give the medicines

and prescriptions for change:

Holy wine, oil, and water,

read the Holy Scriptures, pray 

without ceasing, confess and 

forgive, always and everywhere.

The “medicine of immortality”

is there spooned from a chalice
says St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
his voice echoing down from

the 1st century to comfort us

in our modern malaise. 

***

Christmas Day in Iraq

From: Aaron Haney

Date: Dec 25, 2006 6:12 AM

Subject: a star in the east

25 December 2006

I got up this morning at 0600 to participate in the "Jingle Bell Run" 5K with one of my colleagues, Melissa Messina. We walked over to the gym only to find it had been postponed to tomorrow morning. I went ahead and just shot some basketball for about 30 minutes or so before heading back to my room. Right now it is 0750 and pretty much no one else is up. I'm debating whether to lay back down for an hour or so or open the presents my wife and family sent.

Last night I attended my first "Midnight Mass". I've been going to the Catholic service with CPT Hudson and COL Trakowski who are both Catholic and envited me along to their service when I first arrived in country. I subsequently got drafted into the choir and was part of the carol singing extravaganza just prior to the Mass last night at 11:30. Much of the week to week music sounds like something from John Michael Talbot whom my wife loves (his music that is). Whenever someone asks me about a particular song or what to do at a particular part of the service I just shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know, I'm not Catholic." :^)

The attached picture was taken last night on Christmas Eve beside our building. The humvee looked so stark sitting in the glow of our front entrance light. I snapped a couple of shots before I got the idea to sit the camera on a bench and set the timer. After seeing the result on my computer the story of the "star in the east" came to mind, as if I were somehow participating in that awesome event here in the Middle East, not too far from Bethlehem. I hope everyone has a wonderful day today with family and friends.

Peace, Aaron

The Lady Bug

She has a pet lady bug she keeps in a small glass jar.

The bug’s name is written there in her scrawl “Fuze”

but it is pronounced “Fuzzy” in her 1^st grade parlance.

We looked up what they eat and found “aphids”, but 

we don’t have aphids so it said “raisins,” good enough.

Sometimes Fuze flies around and crawls on the table.

She never tries to flee and is easily handled without 

protest, no biting or stinging (can they even do that?).

I think Fuze is the most low maintenance pet we have

ever had, our week together thus far.  We miss our dog.

***

The Lonely Cannibals

We are a country based 

on rugged individualism

and a consumer-based

economy w/out restraint.

As Richard Weaver said 

ideas have consequences,

so we are lonely cannibals 

eating our limbs w/relish.

***

The Great Watermelon Caper of ‘86

A friend posted a video on Facebook of a semi-trailer truck lying on its side at the edge of a highway in Pennsylvania with boxes of vodka scattered from a hole in the roof of the trailer.

This took me back in time to a similar incident when I was in High School.  It was summer time and I was out with my Dad and one of his employees on a carpet laying job.  The house was on an isolated stretch of Hwy 50 just west of Mitchell, Indiana.  On the way back home from the job we saw a semi-trailer truck lying on its side and a good deal of straw dumped down the roadside embankment.

We stopped to check on the driver and found him walking around the rig and checking on things.  We chatted with him for a bit and he told us he’d already radioed in to let his boss know what happened.  In the straw were hundreds of watermelons and he invited us to take as many as we’d like.  He told us that insurance would cover the lost watermelons that were now all up and down this hillside.  We waded through the straw and secured a good dozen or so unbroken ones before leaving the scene.  On the way home I devised a secret plan to capitalize on this bit of insider knowledge.  

After dinner I went to a local craft store and bought a sheet of white poster board with some colorful markers as well as checked out how much watermelons were going for at the local supermarket (~4-5 dollars a piece).  I went to bed at my regular time, but set an alarm for some time after midnight.  When it went off I snuck out of the house with a flashlight and drove my sister’s car back to the scene of the accident.  

By the light of my flashlight I gathered up as many watermelons as I could fit in her car and a fair amount of straw.  Rolling back into Mitchell an hour or so later I pulled into a vacant lot that I’d scoped out earlier where two highways intersected on the edge of town.  The straw I’d gathered made a nice bed for the watermelons which I laid out in rows beside the car.  I wrote in large letters on my poster board “WATERMELONS $2!”, taped it to the side of my car, and then tried to go to sleep with a blanket I’d brought along.

Sometime around 6 or 7 in the morning  I was awakened by someone tapping on my window.  “You selling these watermelons?”  

I threw off my blanket and rubbed my eyes vigorously.  My first customer!  He asked if they were good and sweet and I assured him they were.  He bought several of them and after about an hour or two I’d sold them all and drove away with about 60 or 70 dollars hard cash in my pocket.  

Back home I realized the car was trashed and I must have made up some excuse as to why I was vacuuming out my sister’s car.  Later that day she looked upset and asked in an exasperated tone “Why does my car smell like watermelon?!”

The Room on West Oak

The room was nestled at the end of the hall on the second story of a one hundred year old house with high ceilings and cast iron radiators that rattled and pinged through cold winter nights.  It was smallish but the closet was largish and there was a tall window that overlooked the wide front porch roof.  The house itself sat on the venerable north side of West Oak Street.

It was the summer of ‘85 and I was between my sophomore and junior years of High School.  It was a new town for me yet only about five miles from my old town where I’d lived from first through tenth grade.  Much of that summer was spent in anticipation of moving and getting the house ready to move into.  The personality of the place had me utterly captivated.

And this room was mine.  I stood in the middle of it and summed up the possibilities.  First off I removed the door to the closet to make it seem more spacious.  I had a desk that was not going to fit in the room proper, so the closet became my office with barely enough room to get the chair in there along with my thin frame and no room to spare.

My parents gave me carte blanche and I ran with it.  I claimed an old oak chifforobe my Dad had bought at an estate sale in order to have a place for my clothes.  I chose the carpet and bedding to match, but what tied it all together was installing a beautiful wall-sized mural of a Fall forest path scene that further extended the perceived size of the room.

A large wooden entertainment system finished out the room’s furnishings which included my Dad’s old record-eight track player combo with speakers.  The rest of it was packed full with my Science Fiction and Fantasy books (along with a sizable number of Stephen King novels) all of which comprised my most valued of possessions: a personal library.

Interesting thing about that record player.  I didn’t really have any records of my own, though there were a few eight tracks of my Dad’s that I liked.  I acquired records* when the most beautiful girl at my new school turned around in her seat, batted her eyelashes, and asked if I wanted to help her out by buying some records for their senior fundraiser.

After we moved into this house and my room had been completely transformed by my ecstatic vision, my parents threw an Open House party.  My Dad had sunk a chunk of change into beautifying this grand old home, but at the end of the day I was told by more than one adult who’d had the tour that my room was their favorite part of the whole house.

It turned into a money pit and my Dad sold it when I was in college.  And since then, like a skipping record,  there are the dreams.  It is always a house that can only be described as a mansion.  The rooms are large and limitless with hidden wings and grand ballrooms, though it is rundown and needs work.  Invariably my joy becomes tempered by the thought “I can’t afford this”... and I wake up.

***

*Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” and Billy Joel’s “Greatest Hits Volume I & II”

The God of Mischief

In two hundred years scavengers will find 

what appears to be the fire-ravaged image 

of a plaid-suited boy with magnificent bangs 

that has miraculously been spared, though 

his smaller sister’s face will have been lost.  

It is a cruel world in which this image is found, 

“hope” - a frayed rope down to just a few strands.  

A cult will be formed to honor this reckless boy  

with his big ears, missing tooth, and freckled nose.

It will be dedicated to Mischief-in-Good-Doing

as its grounding philosophy and touchstone.  

I hope to attain to such a great distinction and

veneration even in this life before the future runs 

with whatever it is that I have been unable 
to achieve in my own misguided way, selah.

***

The Machine

It was considered the highest priority

and they budgeted accordingly,

a machine to smooth the bumps

and clean the air of pollutants.

It roamed the landscape with 

wide tracks flattening the earth,

sucking in the dirty air and 

spitting out clean(er) air.

‘Cept the exhaust pipe propped 

on top, out of sight, put out 

a bit too much and some did 

not want their land flattened.

Regardless, it was the highest priority

and the machine was made bigger

by the year until the hills began

to disappear and darkness spread.

Fuel was consumed at an alarming

rate as the befouling escalated,

but its justification as a solution to 

a problem remained unchallenged.

People felt somehow safer with the machine

prowling around (in other people’s 

plots preferably) making it easier to walk, 

if not for the choking, but always elsewhere.

***