The Fog of War

That well-known phrase referring to the confusion and uncertainty common during a battle seems like it is not unique to the battlefield. I grew up in a military family, and have memories of the occasional soldier or sailor going off the deep-end, usually injuring property and themselves more than anything or anyone else, but sometimes an unlucky few who happened to be close by never had the chance to regret it. But nothing like the mind boggling events that unfolded this last week at Ft. Hood.

There is no question that military service at the front is a dangerous business, and things happen that aren’t always explainable. I find it ironically that the Ft. Hood tragedy happened in the same town that decades ago had the horrible massacre at Luby’s, in a time before Texans freely carried handguns. I remember vividly the argument that had people been packing, someone might have stopped or reduced the carnage during that tragedy in a Texas cafeteria. Now we have this recent horrific event that defies us to make sense of the why, the how. Of all the places you’d think someone on a rampage would have little success, it would be on a military installation. Yet, amidst all that training and weaponry, no one was armed initially. One wonders if firearms as de rigueur will be the norm on bases in the future. I’m not pro-gun by any means, just sense the irony at work.

Bob Greene’s CNN column lays out the challenges brought on by the Fog of War, the likely progression of the days following, and the intense interest in learning who the slain were, their comrades, and a renewed appreciate of what these young men and women go through. But why, oh why, does it take the senseless loss of life to awaken the American psyche like this? Why are we systemically deaf to what we’re doing to our young (and not so young) citizens? How many Americans really understand the damage that’s going on by repeatedly sending our patriots back to the insanity with little regard (or a sense of intentional ignorance) to the mental damage?

Wars are sadly a fixture of our history, yet modern warfare seems to be pushing our mental capacities to cope far beyond what’s humanly possible to handle. Or is it just that such sensationalized media reporting make it seem unusually so? I believe many a Vietnam vet would argue that the mental damage from that senseless engagement is no different than the post-trauma stress syndrome that’s getting more and more publicity.

In conversations with my father about his wartime and military experiences before he passed on, he believed back then his generation served with a purpose, that everyone believed in the cause behind the war. Fast forward to 2009 and it seems not many of us consider the why of what we’re doing over in the Middle East as reason alone to go blindly into the Fog of War.

Enjoy the Last of the Color

My favorite time of the year is drawing to a close. Winter is about to replace fall’s multi-colored coat with a drab, grey blanket. This year was especially colorful in Northwest Ohio, yielding vibrant reds and yellows in every direction, and seemingly timed to turn at the same time. A good year for fall colors, which old timers are telling me means a snowy winter. Oh boy oh boy. Winter wonderlands are a close second in my book to autumn colors. Don’t mind the cold if there’s a white blanket everywhere.

The NaNoWriMo Cometh

October is all about pumpkins and pretty colors. Come November, our thoughts turn to…30 crazed-filled days scribbling nonsensical sentences in a quest for 50,000 words, a modicum of sanity at the end, and that elusive brag: “I wrote a novel.” Oh, and something involving a bird and cranberry sauce happens that month, but never mind that, focus on the writing!

This year will be my fourth voyage into the world of daily word counts, banning contractions, and breaking all the rules for crisp, succinct writing. For those unbapitized, NaNoWriMo is short-speak for National Novel Writing Month, and annual event held since 1999. My first dipping came in 2004, where I’m proud to report I cleared the bar with 51,700 words that will never-see-the-light-of-a-publishers-pressroom, but hey, a goal met is a goal celebrated. If you’re feeling voyeuristic and want a glimpse of the madness such an endeavor breeds, read my celebration post. And if that didn’t bring you to your senses and you still want to have a go, I wrote about my takeaways a week later after my fried brain cells were replenished.

I tried again in 2005, thinking I’d start with something more structured than the 18-word sentence I launched with the previous year (yes, one can create an entire plot in those few words…at least, if your target audience is the NaNo). Spending a week prepping a five-page outline, multiple character sketches, the usual stuff, I thought I’d really take NaNo seriously…and promptly bailed out after about 10 days. Too much structure for NaNo? Perhaps.

2006 brought a third attempt, this time a plot paragraph (yes, as in MULTIPLE sentences) of a book idea, but the fates intervened via the passing of my father that November. Few things can deter a determined writer during NaNo, but that excuse certainly qualifies.

So now, a couple years removed from my three-year NaNo servitude, I’m ready again. Armed with a NEW idea, one not too deeply prepared, but one with serious intent, I’ll charge up the MacBook batteries, load up the iPod with tons of Hearts of Space recordings, and head off to the dozen or so coffee shops I’ve targeted to get me through the month. Nothing brings a smile to writer’s lips, hope in their heart, and that unbridled passion that writing with a purpose brings. Won’t you join in? It’s free, fun, and safe (don’t worry about the months of therapy that’s bound to follow…think of that as research for future NaNos).

It’s All About the “O”

Obama… Osama… Oprah… Overstock.com… Obsession… there’s lots of famous “Os” in the world to muse over.

But, of course, I’m talkin’ about ORGANICS! (And where was your mind, dear reader?)

In a world of plastic and pharmaceuticals, preservatives and pesticides, I am progressively going organic. Fortunately, organics are fashionable, therefore local markets carry a lot more than they used to stock. I’m old enough to have gone to college when and where the mighty Whole Foods Market had their meager beginnings. Back then it was mostly hirsute hippies and willing wannabes hanging out in the original Whole Foods Market, a modest bare-concrete-floor, rough-made-wooden-shelvies, foreshadow of what was to come. Organic wasn’t a buzzword back then, but the practice of nurturing whole Earth and eating clean was well underway.

Without going into the politics of organics and the open-ended argument that big-farm organic isn’t as healthy as localvore organics, I’m just happy there is more variety and reasonable prices than ever before. With terrific tools like this iPhone app and the uber cool companion wallet card), I can channel my inner hippie and decide when it’s all about the O and when it’s not.

Redux: The Zen of Laundry

There are times when I truly enjoy the Zen-like experience of laundry:  the process, the patience for cycles to complete, the rhythmic appliance pulse, the joy of folding. Now, lest you think this makes me desirably domesticated, I confess that although I enjoy the peace and simplicity of the process, I adhere to the bachelor’s art of sorting clothes…namely none! Like the lawn I think should drink naturally from the heavens, so goes my simplistic approach to washing: they’re clothes, they’re all dirty, and they can all come clean together. Fortunately, a wondrous, man-saving product exists called color sheets that prevent sparkling white dainties from being unduly influenced by purple jogging shorts. Modern science solving real-world problems.

There’s something soothing about the washer humming harmonically alongside buttons and zipper pulls clinking randomly in the dryer. And in the winter there’s no better place than the laundry room, with it’s warmed air and sweet, fresh chemical scents made possible by scientists from faceless detergent conglomerates who selfishly pollute their own backyards so that our socks and jocks can be sparkly clean. Over the years, thankfully, I’ve been able to buy cleaning products with reduced dyes, perfumes, bleaches, radioactive chemicals, and other assorted wonders of chemistry we’re safer simply not knowing about. It’s frightening enough knowing residues of these concoctions get intimate daily with our birthday suits. I try to use free-everything products whenever I can, but it isn’t possible to always be pure. A Zen Laundry Master abiding by the “just do it” mantra can’t get hung up on how much phosphorus this one has, or which FDA-approved dye that one has. Life’s too short to worry about such things.

In my early bachelor days, washing clothes at the apartment’s community laundromat seemed like a covert way to meet girls, which of course was both naive and stupid. How friendly can ladies be as they fill washing machines with their dirty unmentionables? What possible sex appeal could exist (ignoring what Madison-Avenue-produced commercials foist on us) between two people chit-chatting over dirty socks and other stark revelations of one’s true nature (i.e., for guys, revealing one’s lack-of-fashion sense)? The only time I remember any girl ever showing the slightest interest in guys at these laundromats was when they ran out of change. It was merely coincidence that I always took my COMPLETE change jar when doing laundry. After all, I never knew when I’d have to rerun those jeans 10 or 12 times…it might happen.

As years passed and the threat of wisdom teased my bachelor mind, the appeal of having my own washer and dryer seemed more practical that the lost hopes of laundromat love. I did notice that women’s interest perked up once word got out that I, a mere guy, had my own washer and dryer. As though some invisible mark of maturity, the mere ownership of the two ugliest appliances ever bestowed on man counted for something in the love war. Maybe they recognized this bold move as the first sign of domestication, and thus raised me one notch higher up the food chain over the wild, free-ranging male with his laundromat-limited habitat. Had I understood this basic principle back then, I might have invested in a top-loading deep freeze. Talk about a chick magnet!

I taught my 18-year-old son the laundry way last year in an honest display of fatherly love to pass on my laundry wisdom. To say he was thrilled to learn this knowledge would be, well, lying. I’m proud to say, however, that he’ll now carry on that fine tradition of male-patterned, laundry-sorting, color blindness. But to my dismay, he’s adopted his own, creative manner of clean laundry folding…or rather, clean laundry STUFFING. He’s content to take his pile of unfolded, unsorted&emdash;but clean&emdash;clothes out of the dryer and upstairs to his room, whereupon he immediately STUFFS the whole pile in one cabinet. How he finds clean clothes to wear, or can discern between dirty and clean is one of those mysterious teenage skills. Somehow, someway, teenagers grow up into responsible adults, one of those mysteries of life yet to be fully explained.

Ultimately, in the true spirit of Zen laundry, each of us has to find his/her own way and simply “just do it.” The details are not important. What’s important is tradition, and I’ve done my part to pass on my male wisdom in this area. When he finally moves away, it will be up to my son to discover the secret of appliance ownership and its chick potential that can be his for just a little bit a month. After all, why should I share all my secrets? I just might have to recycle and reuse them again someday.

random past musing: Walden’s Birthday

On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was published. No doubt absent were posters promoting the book, a 15-city book-signing tour, and those little bookmarks given out promoting the book and author (although Henry did try to organize a nation-wide lecture tour which fizzled after only one city responded). Today’s world of book publishing is marketing driven more than it was in Henry’s day. Six years before “Walden’s” publication, Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” publication was a near-complete bust. Thoreau ending up paying for unsold copies which amounted to most of the printing run (if I remember correctly less than 200 sold). “Walden” was imminently more successful, and the first edition was published in a generous run for the day of 2,000 copies, of which 1,700 sold within a few years. A pristine first edition now would fetch close to $20,000 or more.

I read some of Thoreau’s works in high school, undoubtedly the only literary figure that held much interest for me. My senior English teacher was a Thoreau fanatic, a fact playing no small part in the A+ I received for my paper “Walden and Thoreau” (I must confess it was the only grade above a B I ever received in English-anything throughout high school). I didn’t keep the paper, unfortunately, but the lesson learned was definitely to first discover a teacher/professor’s pet subject before committing to a paper’s direction. That approach is fraught with danger though: while you may receive grace for choosing a subject close to the professor’s heart, you’re also submitting to an expert in your paper’s subject.

On a visit to Boston in the early 90s I was fortunate enough to catch the train out to Concord and walk the distance to Walden Pond. Like most literary shrines, the real thing doesn’t have the same impact as reading what’s seen and felt through a beloved author’s eye. But after spending some time circumnavigating the pond, I began to feel some of the serenity and allure that Henry did. Anti-simplicity icons of civilization around Walden Pond, from the train tracks abutting the pond at one end to the bathhouse and swimming area at the other, do limit one’s ability to feel distanced from our out-of-control world. But even those can be overcome if one settles in to a place and begins to accept the natural instead, filtering out those unnatural distractions. I left wanting to return some day and spend more than the few hours I had, to see if a more serious commune with the spirit of Walden Pond might reveal some of the serenity and simplicity inherent in Henry’s choice words.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

random past musing: Procrastination

It plagues us all, writers and nonwriters alike, this wily anti-muse known as procrastination. I recently gained some insights into how I combat the venerable Mr. P, but…nah, maybe I’ll write about this later.

random past musing: Lessons from a Toyota-Master

Last summer, my faithful Toyota tried desperately to tell me something. Like when our bodies break down trying to call our attention whenever we stray from right thinking, my car gave me one of those life-correcting moments when it refused to go into reverse gear. Suddenly the car embodied all that we should be in terms of progress as humans, and refused to do anything except move forward. No matter how I played with the gear selector, it staunchly sat there as if to say, “Nope. I’m only moving forward from now on…no going backwards for me anymore.” A few thousand later I corrected this arrogant “attitude,” but it left me wondering and reflecting on my own progress in life.

Over the past few weeks I’ve reread journal entries from the past and discovered several disturbing trends: one is the preponderance of dogmatic thoughts throughout with fewer entries reflecting on the present moment or the future, and the other is that journaling occurred heaviest during times when I needed to whine about my condition or lack of progress. No mystery or surprise that journaling is therapeutic, and I’m certainly not condemning that as part of my journal experience. But I was rather disappointed that there weren’t more happy entries, more pages filled with observations and determinations about life ahead. I think I’ll start monitoring these trends and try to journal with a broken reverse gear (as it should be – permanently).

In recent years I’ve tried to adopt a “no reverse” attitude about life. I like to think that human progress implies looking forward, but memories always want us to reflect backwards. Things stay happiest when memories remain snapshots and intention focuses ahead. Sometimes we ignore this approach and repeat the past by making the same mistakes again, or failing to make lemonade when handed lemons. But if instead we lift our heads and look forward instead of always at our feet as though expecting something (the past) or someone to come up from behind us, positive outcomes will become an every day event. Opportunities will suddenly open, we’ll discover new horizons, and life will seem and be good. Like my Toyota, we could all do with a broken reverse gear. I want to reflect back years from now and say, “I used to have a reverse gear, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.”

random past musing: Tripping on Shoelaces

Sometimes, despite one’s best effort, things don’t go as planned; well-intentioned lists of things to do end up like forgotten-to-tie shoelaces that can trip us unexpectedly.

Try as I may, I have to admit that my blogging habit runs in spurts, or more aptly, sprints. I write voraciously for a week or two, then like a distance runner who mysteriously hits the wall, I sit down on a curb to rest, only to come to my senses a week later and realize I forgot to get up and continue the race.

I could bore you into a nice slumber with all the reasons why I did something other than blog these last five or so days, but the truth can be more simply explained: life got in the way. As I’m gearing up to hustle freelance writing this year, organizing my working space, creating a site to extols the virtue of paying me money to massage words, and generally trying to shake off the idle bliss of the long holiday break, doing anything consistently is more of a challenge that it used to be. It seems the longer one falls away from the habit of being productive, e.g., getting up everyday early to prepare for the office, the longer it takes to get back on that flea-bitten nag we all ride called Routine.

Unfortunately the nature of blog readers is often fickle: post often and consistently and they sit at your doorstep like alley cats for the next handout; post irregularly and they fade like strangers in a bar you bought a round for when they discover you’re out of cash. But, one does only what one can, and in the grand scheme of things (translation: importance) blog writing is mostly an experiment, and consistent blogging a luxury.

There’s no doubt I vacillate on what I’m writing here with some days being thoughtful introspections while others days sharing stuff giggled up about some irony of life encountered. I’d like to say I know the broad subjects I’d like to write here, but my tongue would be getting in the way of the truth. I’d like to state that inkmusings is about “x, y, and often z” but again, I’m almost the last to know what I’m about to write.

The bottom line is that I write here for exercise, for strengthening voice, and at times, to entertain. I don’t write here under a deadline, threat of losing income if I don’t post, or with any pretense of impressing anyone (other than my worst critic, which is of course, moi). I do write here, however, because I enjoy it and see the long-term benefit of more consistent free-writing than I usually have in what passes for writing-for-pay on most days. And so for that reason I’ll continue, consistency be damned.

Years ago when I signed on at work and questioned how long the boss (translation: key man for the biz) intended to keep working, he replied, “I’ll work as long as I enjoy it.” And so I’ll keep going forward, hoping to remember to tie up my shoelaces often enough to write consistently and fulfill my goals for inkmusings, and put a thought or spark in the reader’s mind now and then. But most of all, as long as it’s fun to do so…

random past musing: Resignation

Tied up heavily today with business and doctors, so no time for a proper post! The following came through off the Internet and I think it speaks volumes about what’s missing in our harried, adult lives! Food for thought…

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again:

* I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four-star restaurant.

* I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.

* I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

* I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.

* I want to return to a time when life was simple, when all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care. All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

* I want to think the world is fair, that everyone is honest and good.

* I want to believe that anything is possible.

* I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

* I want to live simple again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.

* I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.

So…here’s my checkbook and my car keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first, cause…

…”Tag! You’re it.”