Photographs

I don't know where to begin, describing something so abstract. How do you communicate this? Jealous, but not really. Left out? I'm not sure...when I see old photographs of you, before we knew each other, I can't explain it. You look so happy. I've always loved your smile. Maybe that was it, I'm wishing I could have seen your smile earlier, been part of the chain of events that caused it. These pictures feel like a separation, an ultimately meaningless one, trumped by subsequent events, but a separation nonetheless. I want to be smiling with you sixteen months before we crossed paths. Four years. However far back the photos go. Is that strange? I want to stop you on the street three summers prior to our first meeting and say "God, your happiness is stunning."

History

Fascism is gaining ground in Europe, for the same reasons it did seventy years ago. The lights dim. The world is tumultuous, the economic crisis is looming. You are getting undressed. Last time we were in this situation, it ended with a world war, a nuclear bomb. We are pressed up against one another. The most destructive conflict on the planet, and all the signs are there again. And it doesn't matter at all. Millions may die, we may die, but right now it could be occurring on another planet, in a history book or a novel. Your lips are soft. The buildup is usually the last chance to stop a terrible plan before it can be put into motion. I can feel you breathing. We will probably not have another world war, cooler heads will prevail, but there will always be conflict. And there is that possibility that something terrible and destructive will happen, but not when we are looking into each other's eyes.

The Mayans predicted a paradigm shift in 2012. Our heart rates increase together. I'm not an expert on Mayan mythology, I don't know if this carries any weight, but they were an incredibly intelligent civilization. Your fingers are digging into me. Maybe the modern world, plugged in and distracted and destructive will take notice of the ashes falling from the sky, but will panic before they can see the rainbow arcing across the Pacific Ocean, British Columbia, the European Union, the former Soviet bloc. You fall asleep.

M.O.S.

Before he left, he was different. "I'm going to fight for our country. I'm proud to serve." A girl in our class asked him if he was scared. He shrugged. This sums up pre-deployment. He had photos on his cell phone of his recruiter and him hanging out. Before basic, he got to take apart and reassemble a grenade launcher. "That spring can take your hand off", he told me. "I'm going to be a gunner on an M2, an armored fighting vehicle."
Later, I asked him if his M2 would have air conditioning. You know, because he would be in the desert. "No" he said laughing, "it gets really fucking hot. Like, a buck fifty inside."
I thought about this for a few seconds. "150 degrees?"
"Yeah. You've never heard that before? I guess I'm getting used to this."
Then after boot camp, basic training. "I'm going to Afghanistan." I was relieved. Surely Afghanistan wasn't as bad as Iraq? It wasn't on the news as much...
Then we dropped out of communication. And he went to Afghanistan. I talked to him a couple times while he was there. "I should have gone to college" is what he told me.
Then, a second tour, longer than the first. Sometimes he would post photos online. Firefights, shot up cars. Mud brick houses and Blackhawk helicopters, dark against the rocky background. And mortars. He told me they got rocketed on a daily basis, he saved a piece of shrapnel that almost killed him. He saw dead men, Americans and Afghanis. He is different, though it is imperceptible. He told me he just wanted to survive, he didn't care about anything else. He did survive, but he's probably got another tour before he's out. This is a very difficult thing to explain, the emotions that go along with seeing him. Mostly we drink and act like assholes and this is nice. Occasionally, something devastating will be revealed. "We'd hit them with missiles while they were trying to exfil their dead and wounded." The brutal reality. We are silent momentarily, and then we drink a little more.
I try and think about this as it applies to me as I consider the military. I do not care about patriotism. I have a singular goal, a very specific idea of what I hope to obtain. My work would hopefully not involve firefights and IEDs. But I am still scared. I don't want to experience rockets and dead men and weeping Afghani women. But this isn't about me or for me.
He has seen these things, felt these things, and has been changed. And I want to connect with him on a basic level, but I am a civilian, an outsider.
I know nothing of war.

Promise!

Cell phones might cause cancer, that’s not really news. The research is inconclusive, anyway. Still, at the back of my mind, there’s always a risk analysis going on. If cell phones cause cancer, every phone call, text message and voicemail is a potential carcinogen. The voices of the people you love may end up destroying you in the most literal sense. It never used to work this way with letters and poems. Ballads, dirges, epics, none of these emit RF energy, the risk involved in reading them and experiencing them is entirely emotional. So technology has decided to be a dick again and add a physical danger to communication.
I like this development.
Because now we can’t afford to say anything trivial. Talking to each other is actively killing us. And that is the most exciting feeling in the world.
We are willing to take fragments off of our own lives to share them with others. It was totally worth losing a few minutes to tell you that you looked great in that dress. Now that there is a price to pay, the importance becomes intrinsic. Taking calculated risks has always been part of communicating, and as soon as you say “Fuck it, here’s the truth, here is everything I have ever wanted to tell you, here is every note, poem, phone number, and cigarette butt. Here are memories and hopes and strangers I have smiled at and slept with and loved and hated. Here is me”, it can be the most dangerous thing in the world. Now that the emotional and the physical can share this risk, we can rest easy. Whenever you hear “It’s killing me to tell you this”, you know they are not lying.