It is good to catch a killer, and I can see the argument for death in battle, as I can see no other outcome, and to ask our men and women in arms to change the rules on the ground with an enemy that does not respect the laws of war is a step too far. Yet I am not naive enough to believe that the death of one man, whose ability to rally people to his cause diminished every minute since his greatest act of destruction. He never took to his own the seminal cause that actually unites a disparate and contentious Umma or Arabs of any confessional orientation, that of Palestine. He barely flirted with the idea, which was to Palestine’s benefit and his own organization’s detriment.

The “Arab Spring” gives me hope. Israel never had truly peaceful neighbors, it had neighbors bought off, or dictators bought off. It’s hard for Americans to understand, but even its own allies and friends become extremely prickly when bullied or their governments seen to be responsive to 1600 Penn more than their own people. It is well past time to engage as an honest partner.

It is not where we now find ourselves, in the midst of winding down a war that was ill-advised and foolish, one that we (all of us, ISAF included) could have brought farther along, to a better end, and one we are only somewhat engaged in, but rather where we go from here. It is well past time to engage on the question of Palestine. I believe that that Gordian knot’s solution would rid us both of the oxygen that feeds much of the terrorism the US and the West faces, but also the kindling that supports repressive dictatorships. We must still juggle Afghanistan, we cannot leave with matters half finished, even as frustrating as the leadership is. We must continue to enforce, as best we can, a support for good governance and driving corruption out; corruption is what feeds the Taliban, and in truth any movement that has a brand of “swift justice” as its selling point. I believe one must always finish what one starts, no matter how difficult and painful it is.

Someone posted a  picture of sign of a young black man with a message of no fenty¹ = no gentrification and I took that to heart over the days that passed. Unlike most of the policy wonks who now inhabit DC and their spouses, I’ve briefly lived on the edge. I got food stamps for 6 months and used what little unemployment insurance payouts I got to pay my rent, with $100 a month to spare. I made tortillas at home because I had the time and I searched day and night for another job. I hoped with all that an irreligious person can hope that I didn’t get sick and would need Medicaid since they’d just shut the decrepit but still vague sense of hope embodied in DC General. My boyfriend at the time, for all his, my and our joint later flaws, was a good man who helped me when I couldn’t help myself. Even then this was after commuting 1.5 to 2 hours each way by bus to a job that I hated, that slowly sapped me of my soul and that even after I was laid off I wished I still had, because I needed that paycheck. And yet I knew, if I abandoned every hope, I could maybe fall back on my parents, because the middle class can. I know most in my position could not, and as I rationed the stuff that I couldn’t buy on an EBT (the debit card that replaced food stamps) with my $130 a month, I was not the worst off, and I never lied to myself or others.

Once that line of sheer black and white absolutism becomes greyer and greyer, it’s easier to dart across it, to stay for a bit, to stay far too long, and to commit acts that are both unforgivable and in the microcosm of context almost understandable. The luxury of my upbringing and Swedishness kept me on one side, but I felt awkward and both vaguely responsible for and not about the open trunks on Euclid in the dim, pale light of street lights that seemed to sigh with resignation that they could do nothing to stop a trade that in the long term did us all no good. I understood their presence, their purpose and even if I usually wished their absence, I knew better than to walk on the north side of the street. MPD knew too, and they didn’t seem to be too interested either.²

I don’t own DC. I don’t own property in DC. I only have as much as it allows me to have. Gentrification can be summed up as: It’s not an easy life to be pushed out of the place you’ve had as home by capitalism, even if it is part of the unwritten contract those born in this land signed up for. Having never belonged anywhere I know what that sign means even more than a lot of people: the tenuous attachment to a place I love that I can now afford (in large part more than before) because I had the chance to deploy, to take danger pay and insane hours of OT, and change my situation. At the same time I can’t expect the same of others, and that bitterness isn’t felt as strongly by me.

The moral of this story: I’m never going to refer to someone as sub-human even with felonies on their back, or because they are poor or because some deeds are objectively evil. Not only do I believe in hope and redemption, even if under some cynical strictures, I believe that experiences and the luxuries of our position make certain easy things easier and certain hard things harder. America has hosted some of the most gifted philosophers (Rawls et. al) on the placement within the economic ladder and yet little of this knowledge is widely discussed. I may not always choose to associate with people whose actions are reprehensible, but they don’t cease to be human for that reason; humanity is not just for the rich or the well-placed.

¹Fenty is DC’s current mayor. He is biracial in a way that his much lighter skinned challenger is not. I voted for Fenty, choosing to overlook a number of corrupt decisions I found displeasing. He is also a young man who rubbed more than a few people the wrong way and his challenger had the support of the old (often corrupt) guard in DC, and his failure to see what were even obvious errors to a white boy like me as errors was galling to many. DC used to be ruled by a triumvirate that generally agreed but compromised often: elderly black women who remembered a time before the Civil Rights Act and segregation, white liberals in one ward, and gays and lesbians. Now we have lost some to age, and in the rest the troika has been overrun with new mostly straight, almost exclusively white, and grad-school educated whites who have no understanding for the sentiments of anyone but themselves.

² Their absence is positive, as I never knew what they contained but could hazard a guess and be half right.

I was on a roll that trip, on our arrival going right up and talking to some Swedes by their truck. More than likely special ops guys, because even in the Swedish military beards a la Claus are a bit much. Maybe a little unnerved at first but they’re Swedes and thus comfy. The Danes piling into and out of KIA on the way back were mostly medical personnel, and my mutual intelligibility faculties have withered, but they were a good representation of Denmark. They all wear their first names on their uniforms instead of their last (which might seem casual but if most of the population shares 25-50% of the same 4 last names your options are limited) and they looked perfectly in place.

I don’t miss it, not really, but the memories stay with me, they bubble up from time to time, and they are often the cause of my unsolicited chuckles or ponderous silences.

He raised the thought of whether I had thought about who would care for me in my old age.  I had not, and had to ponder. My flip answer was once my stock answer for burial, since it was simple, comforting,  relatively cheap, and implied a certain symmetry of thousands of lives lived just like mine: return to Sweden. With aplomb L pointed out that would be terribly lonely and of course it would be, and in ways even he did not conceive. Swedes are impenetrable to the wiles of charm and efforts to make friends, or almost perfectly so. Making new friends as an adult would probably take more years than I have left at this point, at least of the value and openness I have now, if it even were possible.

So I have not, and my next quip was that the best of not having children in old age was to be afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and so only torture myself and not those I loved around me as my decay and frustration and anger lashed out without reason at those around me. I suppose the best to do is to remain as independent as possible, for as long as possible, and then try with every means of legal writ to ensure safe harbor, at least for a time. L raised the gay or gay populated nursing home idea and of course wisely noted things could go just as wrong there, as I pondered the self-selecting nature of small communities, not to mention care and quality thereof. Yet that too should continue a life as lived, or better.

And then what?

I didn’t expect to be so vehement in my resistance to return for two to three weeks to help out my co-worker with a number of tasks that have to be accomplished in Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and Afghanistan. I could be thrilled at the fact that I get to go to 2 places I couldn’t manage to get to on my original tour, or that I’ll get to almost surely ride a helo while there. There will be heat now, and plenty of it, and money yet again and time to get things done. I will get to see some of the people I have worked with before and meet new ones.

I could be thrilled, but I’m not. So I’m going out a sense of duty, because if I don’t he does it alone, and it takes longer, and I also know support back from HQ will be haphazard, and, at best, grudging. He fixed the point on which it turns in one of his first emails: “I don’t want to babysit anyone.” I’m the only one who gets what that means, what is needed and when, and the things you can’t change and you shouldn’t even bother and the things you can try to, but not to hang your sanity on its success, and the stuff that has to happen. I wonder too, if I don’t owe him.

So I’ll be leaving again, only a little more adjusted this time, but only a little, to both places. I still have a foot there, and one here, and it isn’t the past yet. It’s shorter and has an and date, and mounds of work waiting for me upon my return, but it’s time away I feel unprepared for.

I took a few turns which led to parking lots on my way north, off the PCH, and into LA. I should have either stuck with the PCH or found somewhere to park and eat after I passed the Beverly Center. West Hollywood is cute but far less manicured than expected. The streets, not the boys. After much turning and fretting, I managed to get on the 101 and headed up to Santa Clarita; I’m staying off Magic Mountain Pkwy…

It’s been a good time, even the work. Lots of fun texts and curios explored and glass objects I WANT at Laguna Beach but would then have to ship and they’d break and so no. Saw some”kids” in a Mustang that made me think of Western MD. Well the white ones at least.

Be good to get back, once all this is done. Forty hours still feels odd, and I’m at loose ends.

I’m happy to be leaving, though of course it is bitter sweet, having had more friction than there ought to have been and I still don’t know what reception awaits me upon my return to work. That said I have accomplished plenty, and I’ll be on vacation for a full month, and have plenty of time to decompress and reflect. With the office on lock down due to weather I may be able to eschew having to hear from them until my return some 30 days hence. I may have over-identified with people out here, but it is the only logical course of action when there’s so much lack of perspective in the US. I didn’t follow the race in MA and I don’t really care that much about this race or that issue or any of it.

The last few days will involve packing and shipping back stuff to the US and deciding what to bring to France and then on to the US. Do I bring the boots which have been so good to me, or do I stick with the very nice black tall for shoes/short for boots foot attire I picked up in Wiesbaden in December and sneakers? The desert boots weigh a lot, and on the flight to FRA I have a weight limit to content with, plus I’m pondering how much I’ll actually use them, but I am attached to them.

Old patterns are re-appearing in my mind, even as I had other plans just a few weeks ago. I guess this is the post-deployment adjustment kicking in, and hopefully I can get some of those plans for my life back between the cross hairs of desire. I still will likely think that a lot of your arguments are petty and pointless and I’ll eschew a lot of it, but I still have my bubblegum pop fixation that balances it all out nicely. A certain clarity has slipped from me in the past couple weeks, but I hope escape from the pressure cooker takes me back there.

I liked being further forward more than being in the creature comfort rich but full of petty stressors luxury domiciles. I wore my IBA with no complaint  and slept using the chin strap to keep my head from slumping too heavily on my way to Kandahar, as the French officer read a history of the American Civil War, the equipment seemed not to strain at its chains too violently and the heat of 30 extra pounds kept me insulated from the cold at 0400. I have seen the guts of aircraft and the actual wing, from the inside, pallet upon pallet have I shared my flights with, all going up to do what needs to be done. I’ve involuntarily watched the same sports loop at Ali Al Salem in comfortable yet abused and withering leather chairs, learned no more than 2 muffins per day, that you can’t trust the schedule, that few things feel quite as good as leaving an Army base and returning to an Air Force one, the wavering sense of control, lost and regained in the same minute, the reassuring shaking of the body by 16 blades above, behind and ahead. I’ve been taken for federal law enforcement (every 3 and 4 letter in the book out here), or no more questions asked, or asked if questions can be asked, been out of place and both curiosity and obscured, an enigma, compounded by the gauze wrapped around the military’s glbt, the subtle dishonesty in the field that doesn’t care or allows the law to be enforced or not on whims.  Gotten pretty good at Texas Hold ‘Em, practiced with special agents, or at tables at Victory and Stryker, still can’t shuffle, play for fun, and it is fun. Am desired by some to stay, and conflicted, but must go.