when the dust clears
After my last trip to Iraq in 2006, I told myself I would return. I’d go to the places I patrolled with the marines and to the homes I stomped into and out of as an appendage of their squads. As an embedded journalist, I learned little about Iraqi people’s lives, other than what these lives looked like when instantly disrupted and upended. Next time, I would go without bulletproof vest or Kevlar helmet — and without the retinue of troops. I would listen and learn. I figured I’d be able to make this trip in five, maybe six years, once the the conflict ended or at least ebbed. But there is no end or ebb on the horizon.
U.S. Marine convoy north from Kuwait to Iraq, July 18, 2004
A decade ago to this day I was rattling around the belly of an assault amphibious vehicle just a few…
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Life after legs
In my many years of preparation and participation in war I was never really given a direct answer to why we were at war. Of course there was the consistent reminder that finding and killing Bin Laden would somehow bring vindication for the 2,000 innocent civilians who died on 9/11. But why were we willing to loose another lot of military lives for this goal; which was seen as marginal at best by any educated military strategists. The truth was, by the time we had chased the rabbit down the hole enough to see his tail, the journey back to daylight didn’t seem worth the trouble anymore. To further this analogy where Bin laden is the rabbit, even bringing the rabbit back up with us wouldn’t feed the appetite we had conjured in chasing it. In other words, killing Bin Laden wasn’t going to make our country safer, and it…
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The Daily Post
“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
– Ray…
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I'm not simply aging, but how could that be logical?
U.S. Marine convoy north from Kuwait to Iraq, July 18, 2004 
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