Cool Camper…

I saw this in the parking lot at the War College when I checked in on Wednesday … This is perfect!!! With this, weekend trips would be awesome!

Music…

  Sat in an almost deserted hotel pub tonight, listening to the “band” and having that one last beer that I knew I should skip, but my lack of internal limiter made it almost certain that I would drink… The “band” was bad, but not criminally so – all those who have been in a similar setting know exactly what I mean… Would have been nothing significant to write about, but for their choice of song…

They chose the song “Superman” by Five for Fighting (or John Ondrasik, if you’re splitting hairs). The song has a lot of meaning to me. If you’ve never seen the “Concert for New York City”, following the attacks of 9/11, I recommend that you Google it – and when you do, listen to the solo performance of a man at the piano, singing a song about a superhero whose sense of humanity made him wish he could bleed like normal men…

When the planes hit the Twin Towers, I was mortified, shocked, almost in tears. But I didn’t know anyone there – it was abstract, I knew the immense loss of life and felt the impact, but it didn’t seem real, despite the footage of people leaping to their deaths from the towers instead of waiting to die as the towers fell…

But… when I heard that a plane had hit the Pentagon and that it had hit the Navy Command Center, that’s when I felt my heart rising in my throat. The man that had been my roommate at the Naval Academy, the man who was my best friend, who had shared the crucible that had made me the person that I am today, the guy who had chased me around the desk while waving a ruler like a pirate’s saber after I proposed to my then-girlfriend, claiming that he wouldn’t stop until I said he’d be my “best man” – he was there… or should have been.

I called and called, but couldn’t get through. I left more than one voice mail, in hopes that he would receive it and call and let me know he was ok.  I was on an inspection visit in Mobile, Alabama, and we were quickly called back to Norfolk, Virginia – ended up driving a rental car 13 hours to hop a C-2 to the J.F. Kennedy off the coast of NYC after a quick stop at home to drop off laundry and re-pack… Didn’t hear back for a couple weeks, but finally got the call – he was alive…. He had an appointment that day that took him away from the impact point, he saw the plane head in… We both lost a friend in the tragedy, someone he had worked with, someone we had been friends with – we cooked dinner and drank beer in my kitchen together – but it wasn’t my best friend… I can’t measure the relief that I felt when I heard his voice and learned he was alive, one of the times in my adult life I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear or two…

Bill was and is my closest and best friend – I’m a bit embarrassed and disappointed in myself when I say that I haven’t spoken to him in years… Not because we’ve had any crisis or disagreement, but because I’ve just let life drive me where it wanted me to go…

Life is what you make of it – small moment like tonight remind me what I’ve missed..  and what I need to make sure I don’t miss again….

 

Stumbled upon…

Amazing what you find just wandering about – this spot is a beautiful little koi pond tucked back in behind the Gulf Hotel in Manama. Almost a maze of pathways to get back there, but the scenery is worth it… If it wasn’t around 105 degrees out, I’d be hanging out in a small dining/seating area just to the right of this picture, reading a book… Bamboo tables and chairs, the whole nine yards… Just one thing missing 😉

Writing again…

Got the writing bug again – it strikes when two things converge: time to think and emotional unrest. It has to be both, one by itself never does the trick. Funny, at times in my life these have been both good and bad things – unrest isn’t always bad and time isn’t always good… I think these influences are good right now, maybe because that’s what I want them to be. Hard to tell, patience to see how they develop will be key – bad for me because I don’t think I’ve ever really been a patient person.

Either way, writing is good – kind of like reading in reverse. When I read, the words create a movie in my mind; to the point where I no longer even see the individual words, but only the steady parade of images across my brain… Writing is the opposite – I take the images and try to turn them into words. They have to be vivid and tangible, which is why both the time to record them and intensity of the images (i.e. emotional unrest) are important… Getting the words down on paper seems to help with the unrest – reducing the intensity, if not the depth of emotion. Hopefully it will help with the patience, too…

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
―     Ernest Hemingway

and…

Back on the grid…

Hey! Whew, the last eight months have been a blur… Ok maybe not that much of a blur, but certainly busy enough to preclude posting here – time to kick it up a bit. Lots of current events out in the big, wide world to comment on, as well as events happening in my own life (i.e. returning from overseas). The purpose of this blog may shift a bit – take on more of a literary tone to match my upcoming assignment as an actual, no-s**t teacher at the grad-school level… As with everything, more to follow as the story of my life develops 🙂

Deep Breath…

It’s been quiet here, not necessarily calm, though. Work has been eventful, lots of things happening here in Bahrain and around the Arabian Gulf region, but it hasn’t been as hectic as its been in the past. Some of that has to do with my boss being out of town, his tendency to get “excited” over events inevitably causes more work for the rest of us…

Been thinking about writing, I think because I’ve dived back into reading – when my spare time allows. In the past I’ve lept into putting words down on paper, letting my thoughts of the moment guide the prose, but this time I think I want to be a bit more careful. The past efforts were derailed when I changed mental and emotional directions, sometimes intentional and sometimes not. They stand alone, unfinished, because I can’t bring myself to reenter those worlds in my brain and bring them back to life. I’ll never delete them and erase the memories, as they’re a part of me, but they’re in the past. Moving on….

Maybe I’ll start posting the story as it develops… More to follow – always 🙂

Costa Coffee, 28 October

 

Sitting here at 5:30am after this mornings events were cancelled, figured I was up… Its time to dust this off and start writing again… Not that blogging is the be all and end all, its just that it gave me the venue to get thoughts and ideas out of my head – rather than just banging around and getting all jumbled up…
Posting a pic of my cauldron of coffee – good, recent memories… 😉 Hopefully, much more to follow…

Night time – ramblings

Ever see a picture that feels so familiar, even though you know you’ve never been there before? That’s how this one makes me feel – the bend of the stream, the picnic table positioned off to the side of the adjacent clearing and the open area perfect for the pitching of a tent…

Ruminations…

Listening to more mellow, acoustic music lately. I think the course of events over the holidays and facing the future of the upcoming year in Bahrain have put me in a semi-melancholy mood. Not that everything is driving me that way, I have bright spots and wonderful things in my life as well 🙂 Its just that over the next three months, I have a lot of things to pack into my life – some great things, some not-so-great and some that just flat-out stink. There is a temptation to simply emotionally check out of the process – if I just don’t care, it won’t hurt… That’s a fallacy, though, the hurt is just postponed and amplified – it never goes away unless you deal with it, face it and get through it.

Back to the music, though 😉 What currently has my attention is a two volume “set” (or series, I guess) by Jackson Browne. Two songs specifically have caught my ear, “My Stunning Mystery Companion” and “These Days”… I first heard them in a YouTube thread – the kind of hapazard linking from one song to another, based on the recommendations from the YouTube algorithm. I started with Warren Zevon of all people and progressed into Jackson Browne – his live acoustic songs really resonated with me. You be the judge:

Too Long Between Posts

Holy Crap! Its been almost 5 months since my last post 😦 Something has got to give – so far, that something has been me… Ancient Red-Headed Caucasian Saying: “That which cannot go on forever – won’t…”

Looking into 2012 with anticipation, concern, joy, dread and many other mixed emotions. One thing I do suspect, this year will bring closure – how, when and where are all questions that will be determined…