I've got a lot of thinking to do tonight. I'm not sure how much of it will end up spilling out, until I actually start typing. That happens more than you'd imagine.
Today has so many names. Veterans Day. Armistice Day. Remembrance Day. I spent the eleventh day of the eleventh month in a strange space in my head. I started this morning by finishing off a thriller novel about a geneticist who engineers a virus to force a solution to the problem of global overpopulation, and god help me, my inner nihilist rooted for the bad guy. I ended the day going to a war movie with the man. It was a deeply disturbing, nothing held back film about World War II, the one that proved the lie of the War to End All Wars. I had just come from my monthly massage, straight to the movie theater, and to say this harshed my mellow is a massive understatement. As a lifelong student of the human condition, it moved me deeply to see the rapid character development in desperate situations, but it was not for the faint of heart, especially those who can't handle graphic violence on screen.
Regular readers and friends know how seriously I take discussions of military service and respect of those who put themselves on the line for the rest of us. I feel very uncomfortable when I am around people who automatically say "thank you for your service" to military members, not because I don't feel the same, but because those words seem so inadequate to me for such an incomprehensible undertaking. Even in times of peace, veterans relinquish control over their major life decisions, such as where to live, how many hours in a week to work, and how often they get to be present for milestones in their children's lives, to be available to risk everything up to and including themselves for us (wherever and whoever that "us" happens to be). In times of war, the costs are so extreme, I can't comprehend what it takes to be willing to become the people they are asked to be. Everything changes, and I am humbled by the strength that takes to go through it, knowing that it could mean losing touch with the identity that defined them for their entire lives up to that point, and altering the future for themselves and countless others.
I need to go metabolize the brown liquor I just drank (and needed after the day I had), and give free rein to my dark thoughts of war and sacrifice. Like the rainbow after the biblical flood, my promise to you that tomorrow will be a happier day is this picture of Athena. Good times will return.
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