<![CDATA[Asahel's Search For Meaning]]>

<![CDATA[A Drive through (my) History) ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1743821831/E20080808105141/index.html

Greetings from Alexandria, Virginia!

Driving here from Kentucky was like driving through a road movie of my personal and family history... if directed by Quentin Tarantino. It jumped around a lot.

I left the family farm and drove west to Murray, where I had attended college. I stopped by the courthouse for some legal matters that needed attending, and ran into an unfortunate cousin (I'm related to half of that county, you see, and they other half are college students or professors). I don't believe he recognized me. One of my ancestors was the first sheriff of Calloway County, and the older graveyards are full of identifiable kin. I drove on.

I drove through the fringes of the Land Between the Lakes, nee Between the Rivers. My family lived there from sometime before 1809, until the 1960's when the government decided to make a gift of the land to the Tennessee Valley Authority to create a National Recreation Area. For more information on this tragedy and the ploys used by the TVA to remove the families, see BetweenTheRivers.org, in particular This Article. Much later, in the 1990's, I had an internship with TVA and worked at a campground here, with my good friend and trailermate Adam (more on him later). I drove on...

...through Tennessee, on interstates 24 and 40, the route I used on my first fledgling roadtrips back in college. The target of those would be Knoxville, or the Smoky Mountains. I spent the night in Knoxville, and the next morning, drove on.

I crossed into Virginia that morning. I was conceived in Virginia, or so it's said. My ancestors also arrived in Virginia from Scotland, as far as we can tell. They were most likely sent over or fled due to the Jacobite Risings. Originally, Kentucky was part of Virginia, as Kentucky County, Virginia, before becoming its own state in 1792. It's possible that this leads to some of the genealogical issues I have in tracing my family further back than 1809.

As I drove on through Virginia, I passed Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech. My friend (as mentioned above) Adam went to Forestry School here and, long before the Virginia Tech tragedy last year, was part of a much more personal tragedy for me. Adam was killed in a motorcycle accident on (if my memory serves) February 21, 1994.

Anyway, enough. I'll stop the boring now. :)

]]> Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:51:41 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1743821831/E20080808105141/index.html <![CDATA[Choices, Choices ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1743821831/E20080724125404/index.html

I'm sitting here drinking coffee in a Borders bookstore in Albuquerque; I checked out of my hotel and walked over here. There's soft music playing, and a few conversations going on but all in all, the world is as quiet here as it gets anywhere anymore.

Obviously, I made it back from Iraq, or else this particular afterlife is stranger than most.

I've heard it said that if one were able to stand at the North Pole, no matter what direction one faced it would be South. This makes logical sense in one respect. After all, when one has walked to that point, whether from the East, West or South (which seem to rapidly lose their meaning in that context, for it follows that one is always approaching the North Pole from the South), when that point has been reached, to continue walking will take one further from North, with no possibility of approaching it more closely. It's like zero on a number line, or the Origin on a grid.

In my mind, though, it's ridiculous. My inner conception of this idea is like those old Adventure text games, where one would see possible directions (You can go South, North, or West) which eventually whittle down to one possibility (You can go South). All other directions, in my mental image, have an impermeable gray haze hanging over them, and one is, in essence, herded South.

If you dont see a possible connection with your own life, then lucky you.

Right now, I'm at the North Pole (for the sake of analogy, forget that I just said I'm in Albuquerque, or use a typical American's ignorance of geography to assume they're the same place). My new job is waiting for me in DC, and I begin August 11th. No matter where I sit drinking coffee between now and then, it is the North Pole, and my cubicle is South of here.

I'm not displeased about this at any means, and of course, I DO have a choice in the matter. I'm not going to get all bound up in whether I'm meant to or supposed to go there; it's irrelevant to my worldview. I'm going, and in between, I'll be sitting here at the North Pole. Or possibly the South Pole, as I'm told it's more in the realm of possibility when it comes to actual visitation. In that case, my job is North of here.

]]> Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:54:04 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1743821831/E20080724125404/index.html <![CDATA[Suicide ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1189561305/E20080613215450/index.html

Soundtrack: "Everybody Hurts," R.E.M.

Someone killed himself yesterday.

Even now, that little smartass part of me is burbling away "Of course someone killed himself today. Probably more than one." So to clarify,

Someone here at my base killed himself yesterday

I don't know who he was. I have no idea if I might have talked to him once, or once a week, or every day.

I have no idea if I could have said anything to make it not happen.

Understand, if you can, that that's not an attempt to take blame. This person made their own decision and, as I've blogged before, I respect their right to end their life. I don't like it, and I'd like to think that they could be talked out of it.

On occasion, with my job, I have the opportunity to help stop suicides. Sometimes a message comes in from a family member, who got a disturbing phone call, or a disturbing email, or (just the other day) a disturbing text message. I notify the command, and they go out and find the person and stop them. In an ideal world, anyway. Or at least, an ideal world where people kill themselves, which just doesn't make much sense. Regardless, it was that kind of ideal world the other day, and that person was stopped. The one yesterday, though...

I didn't get a message on this one, and I didn't even know about it until today. I'm not going to post any details, because they're not mine to share with the world. By the time this is posted, it will be about a month after the fact.

How does a heathen worldview incorporate suicide? Any ideas?

]]> Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:54:50 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1189561305/E20080613215450/index.html <![CDATA[Boom! Boom! ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1008697709/E20080609225744/index.html

So I'm lying here on my bed, watching Doctor Who (the really creepy ones set in World War II where the little kid and all the other people wander around in gasmasks saying "Are you my Mummy?") and suddenly I hear booms, off in the distance and getting closer.

War has changed me. I know I talk about this way too often, but it suddenly occurs to me that this is the fifth anniversary of the day I first arrived in Iraq. What better time to look back on everything?

On June 9th, 2003, I flew from the APOD at Camp Wolf, Kuwait, to Balad Iraq. We walked off the airplane and slept on the floor of an old diplomatic terminal building, less than two miles from where I'm lying right now, but millions of miles away in every other sense.

We had no showers and only wooden outhouses. There were air conditioning units in place, but they weren't hooked up (we found out why when we tried hooking them up and fried the generator).

Now I'm lying in a trailer with shower and toilet, a refrigerator, television, and DVD player. I have an antenna on the roof which collects 10 or so satellite stations from a nearby tower. I have cell phone service, should I choose to use it.

The next morning we rode by convoy up to Tikrit. I was assisted by a Lieutenant Colonel in getting on the convoy. We would stop by the side of the road for piss breaks. We rode into downtown Tikrit, and stopped for rotisserie chicken and ice from little shops.

Now I'm forbidden to travel by road, or even leave this base from the time I arrive until it's time to leave. Convoys certainly don't stop like that, and IED's make such travel extremely dangerous. I have been told that Lieutenant Colonel is dead, victim of a helicopter accident at Fort Hood.

We thought the war would end soon, then. Now we don't know when it will end, if ever.

This is bumming me out, ya'll. Sorry. I'll close off that part by saying that then, I had 4 more deployments in the future. Now, so far as i can tell, I have no deployments left to do.

Dr. Who's over, and the rocket attack is long since over. It's high time for me to hightail it off to bed.

]]> Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:57:44 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1008697709/E20080609225744/index.html <![CDATA[Many Mini-Meltdowns ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1008697709/E20080510211505/index.html

I have a new job.

Not yet, really, but I have accepted a new position within the same organization. It's definitely a step up. I saw the job posting, applied, was interviewed, and, to my own surprise, was offered the job. I didn't really... well, at first I was positive I would get it. I could picture it very clearly -- you know that feeling, when you know something will happen because you can visualize it perfectly? It was like that. Then I had the interview, and convinced myself it was a terrible interview, so I was actually surprised when they offered me the job. Although surprising, it was normal. Just another job; just another move, this time to Washington DC...

Then I began to freak out.

I was already planning on just loading up the Jeep, driving to DC and getting a furnished tiny apartment. I still am. That's not freaky. What keeps freaking me out is the streams of emails coming in from those tasked to help me with my move. Would I like help selling my house in Kentucky? (What house?) How about help purchasing a home in DC? (WTF?) To what address should the movers come to pack up my household goods (What household goods? What address?)

I know it sounds like all these are just a matter of saying, "No thanks, I don't need help in that area." Of course it is. It's not that. It's just that the level of assistance that I'm being offered suggests to me, much more than the job title or job description, that this is a VERY IMPORTANT POSITION. And that's what's giving me mini-meltdowns.

I'll just be be-bopping along, behaving perfectly normal, when what almost feels like an anxiety attack wells up, and I can't think about anything but this upcoming thing. All other thoughts are driven out of my head, and I start saying (sometimes just to myself, and sometimes out loud), "Breathe. Walk. Breathe. Walk."

I'll be fine, really. I'm excited. I'm stoked. And I'm changing my life to a serious degree. A little bit of meltdown is to be expected.

Right?

]]> Sat, 10 May 2008 12:15:05 -0500 http://homepage.mac.com/asahel/AsahelSFM/B922510240/C1008697709/E20080510211505/index.html