inkgrrl's inkblog

All three-and-a-half of you readers may or may not know that I signed up with Adopt-A-Platoon to send care packages and letters to an HQ platoon of Army Engineers over in Baghdad. One of the things the guys have written to me about was that they hear few positives from the media about their role over there – that most of what they get as news paints them as the brutal oppressors, just as some Iraqi factions would have the world believe. That doesn’t seem to be how the majority of the folks back here really feel, but it makes the kids over there (and most of them are still kids, or at least young’uns) feel like shit.

The Grand Poobah and I just shipped the second batch of care packages to the guys, and were pleasantly surprised when the clerk at the post office where we mailed the boxes chipped in $20 of her own money to help out, muttering and bitching the whole time about how ungrateful the Iraqis are and how we’re over there dying to give them a taste of freedom. Her name is Anh and she’s from Vietnam.

Discuss.

So a good friend sends me this link from the best of Craig’s List… says it reminds him of me. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or just sit here and pick fleas out of my armpits and roast them with a nice Chianti. On another note, the fuzzy gloriousness that is the Grand Poobah helped me plant fleurs in my backyard today, to the sweaty satisfaction of us both.

In the meanwhile, I retreat from the pain. I vacillate, I fluctuate, I dive in a sine-wave down the submerged hallways in the back of my brain and finally when I think I’ve used up all my breath and can’t continue and will surely remain there in the darkness forever, I re-emerge from that cold pool of memory, oldness floating oil-slick on top and coating my body as I step back out into life.

That oldness will rub off or be washed off by newness as I keep moving, keep breathing, stay awake and rediscover now-elusive balance.