Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

So,

 

I decided it was time to get another post out there.  There have been two things on my mind recently and I think those are the things I will address.

 

I suppose I ought to say something about R&R.  It has been alright.  Actually, it has been great.  I am not sure how to properly describe the whirlwind that this whole thing has been. 

 

It is a real trip that you can get on a plane at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and about three days later walk through your front door.  You go from a world with fighting and killing and all that suffering that goes on over there to walking through your front door and playing with your children. 

 

Something that definitely made it real is while we were all out there waiting on the flight-line to hop on the massive transport that took us from Bagram to Kuwait I saw two HMMWVS with two flag-draped coffins.  Then I saw the soldiers lining up for a Fallen Comrade Ceremony.  Then I realized one of the other transports lined up on the flight-line had Dover on its tail.  Dover is where they fly all the fallen for processing.  Anyway, the whole point of this is I realized that those of us going on R&R weren’t the only ones starting the long trip home.  I was going home to spend some time with my family, and two of my brothers were going home in boxes.

 

This whole trip has been great overall but it has been slightly dampened by the terminality of it all.  It is hard to enjoy oneself too much with the realization unspoken yet inescapable realization that it is only for a couple of weeks. 

 

Some highlights:

 

I got to know Danny and Danny got to know me.

 

I got lots of Emmy snuggles.

 

I got to spend quality time looking for animals and dinosaurs with Porter.

 

I had the chance to spend over a half hour chasing model trains along their line at the Ogden Union Station Train Museum. 

 

I got to spend some time with my wonderful wife.

 

I got to get away from it for a while.

 

Again, however, it is a little bittersweet because it was a brief reprieve.  It will definitely be a struggle going back.

 

The second thing I have been thinking about a lot lately is the whole not coveting thing.  There isn’t really a whole lot that anybody else has that I want.  I would love the financial freedom to be able to travel extensively and occupy myself with deep thoughts and humanitarian service, but really that is unrealistic so I am not overly hung up on it.

 

My struggle has been that I want to be able to write, and not just write, but write great things.  I have to some degree coveted the abilities of the great writers I admire.  I am beginning it is ridiculous to expect to do things like my favorite writers (Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Nabokov, and such).  I recently read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.  Great book.  Bulgakov was satirically and obliquely critical of the Soviet government.  His plays and other works were banned.  He asked permission of the government to either emigrate, or be able to work somehow as a writer within the establishment.  Stalin called him personally and asked him to stay.

 

Bulgakov gave up on his ever being able to make a living as a writer in the Soviet Union, or at least the type of writer he wanted to be.  He worked in the Master and Margarita nearly 11 years.  It was not completed at the time of his death.  His wife gathered the manuscripts and notes years later and the book was published abroad and was instantly popular underground in Russia.  Many of Bulgakov’s idiomatic critiques of life in the Soviet Union slipped immediately into common usage.  The book was finally published, severely redacted, after the Soviets realized they could not subvert its influence.

 

Anyway the point of all this is Bulgakov, considered one of the great Russian writers of the 20^th century, died believing he was a failure, and his life’s work was fruitless.  The greater point to me is it took him 11 years to write his Magnum Opus and he never saw it published.  How should I expect to do nothing but dream and think through plots, and do nothing, and expect greatness.

 

I think the closest comparison I can come up with is the attitude of John Nash as portrayed in A Beautiful Mind, where he spent all his time trying to come up with a unique, innovative idea. 

 

I want to write but I want everything I do to be innovative, different, and great.  Not to compare myself to a genius like Nash, but essentially it is the idea of expecting my first work to be worthy of the Nobel Prize for literature.

 

It is arrogance and naivety of the worst sort.

 

As I was thinking about all this I came up with an thirdish topic.

 

War will always be the stupidest way possible to solve problems.  There is no human endeavor more futile, senseless, and wasteful.  However, it must be noted that it is actually occasionally a solution, and even more rarely, the only viable solution, to some very serious issues.  Still, it is a waste and a travesty.  I think those who have truly embarked to do battle, with pure motives, will be the first to reject war and embrace peace, when the time for peace has come.  Anyone who would pursue war for any ulterior reason whatsoever can rot for all I care.  War for the pursuit of economic benefit, plunder, territorial expansion, any of that, is criminal.  The only good reasons for war are to protect the innocent, free the oppressed, defend life and liberty and family.

 

Enough ranting. 

 

Lately I have been in a pretty big funk and I have been reading some stuff that affected me greatly and I plan to focus on that my next post.

 

Peace.