I have choices today.... worry about the world's troubles, do laundry, wash the kitchen floor, shave, restore democracy to America, re-write 'Moby Dick', take a quick trip to Seattle, make some baked beans, climb Denali, take out the garbage, re-invent the wheel, go to the library, watch old movies....... I am always struck with the possibilities that engulf me as I open my eyes in the morning.
There is a moment before reality kicks in, a peaceful clarity that today I can do anything; that there is nothing that cannot be achieved.. All I need to do is smile at someone and they will be happy.....give away a simple dime to insure someone's well being, tell a joke and ease a pain, laugh and make the rain stop.
But then my feet hit the floor and I resolve to just watch football and drink beer.
I almost got into it with a stranger. Just words. But I did the right thing and just shut up. I guess I was a couple of beers into a quiet night and I just starting waxing on about how we just need to end the wars and we could save the economy. Just a flippant remark to a friend. Ain't no deal, he knows how I feel. But the guy next to my friend, with the NASCAR jacket and the Packer Baseball cap pitched right in. "Well, if we don't fight them there, we're gonna fight them here." I kinda looked at him and decided the beer was too good to interrupt, to comment back. I heard that shit forty years ago and all that happened is we ended up with a lot of Vietnamese restaurants. The guy went on...".....and if you don't support the troops, what kind of American are you? This is when we need Patriots!", he almost thundered. Well, I am a Commie-Socialist,tree-hugging, beer-drinking, dope-smoking, free-love, hippie, eco-freak, doughnut-scarfing, porn-watching, bearded, sushi-eating, children-loving, atheistic,sandal-wearing,unemployed kind of an American, but I really didn't want to try to explain all this to him and I assumed it was a rhetorical question anyway. I guess I would have lost him at 'tree-hugging. Gees...it takes about 175 years to grow a decent oak tree... ya gotzta hug that kind of perseverance, right? But I figured that it would have been a waste of time to try to explain that to a fellow who likes watching cars go around in a circle at 200mph while sucking a six-pack of cheap beer.
But it gave me pause. I thought just a little about the cheap kind of Patriotism the guy tried to pass off. It wasn't new. I heard that shit before and I'm sure I will hear it again.
I'm not the kind of guy that gets a huge honking hard-on wrapping myself in a flag...... but sometimes the possibilities are inviting. I mean, if Patriotism was like a good mind blowing orgasm, shit&whiskers, I would be running down the street wearing nothing but a flag. But that doesn't work.
The real deal, though, is I do support our troops. I would love to support them all the way home. And I am not a 'dis-band' the army kind of guy. We unfortunately need soldiers. And unfortunately, they all seem young. Anyways, in a couple of days it's Veteran's Day, or Armistice Day, or Wave-Your- Fucking- Flag Day.... the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day when in 1918 the War to End All Wars Ended. Hmmmmmmm.... that didn't work out, huh.
He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.
He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he's fighting for Canada,
He's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians,
And he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
Now the thing that getz me....war doesn't kill a bunch of middle aged men.... it kills young people. And it is the young who must wake up and decide they do not want to die. Or grow up and see their children die. We need a lotta things in this world..... and one of them is NOT more dead Veterans to remember.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.
He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
