Not Dead

[Onasander]

Hey, Um, sorry, I forgot to tell you guys that I both got extended in Iraq, and as to date, am not dead. Add to that, my laptop broke, and so lost what I had done of Vegetius, as well as a comparison study of The Divine Comedy, and girlfriend broke up with me, and my knee is worst, and the army executed my puppy, point blank, 9mm, and it turns out, all we had to do to win this war was give the Iraqi's our PT belts. Virgil, why didn't you think of that when you were here?

 

I hate my job. Damn puppykillers.

 

I'm looking into starting my own bookpress once I get back, I'm going to fail horribly and go bankrupt and have 500 copies of Utopia and The Divine Comedy under my bed in a apartment with a crackhead roommate....wooooooo! I made a good career decision. Must remember.....coast guard........coast guard........coast........guard.

 

Any old books published from the 19th century and back (for copyright reasons) you wanna see come back into print?

[Gaius Octavius]

We did win the war! It's just that no one told the Iraqis. "Mission Accomplished!"

 

[Vibius Tiberius Costa]

Nice to know your alive.

 

coast guard eh? I have never heard of the beautiful beaches of Alaska

 

vtc

[G-Manicus]

It would seem the rumors of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.

[Nephele]

The army shot your puppy??? No wonder thay can't find Osama, if they're targeting puppies as "the enemy".

 

Be safe, Onasander. Sending positive thoughts for your quick return home. For the quick return home of all the troops.

 

-- Nephele

[Onasander]

The saddest thing happened, a dream of mine died... well, actually a few, but the one I'm talking about here is one I think most of you can relate to.

 

As a kid, did you ever look at the artist reconstructions of Ancient civilizations live Babylon and Rome and just stare at the pictures, wishing you could be these, absorbing the details and the way of life in that scenes seemingly full spectrum moment? Well, guess what, I did. I happened at a place called Camp Stryker in Iraq when on a lay over from getting a root canal/tooth pulled/ radical extraction done.

 

I was walking back from the chow hall to the layover tents, and passed a little trailer square full of Hadj Merchants selling bootleg movies and music, with the Shiite guy pretending to be a Christian selling middle eastern Icons, the guy from India wholly out of place selling Hindu statues, and of course, the ever present Barber. I saw contractor civilians, female (Iraqi)translators and army and even Canadian soldiers, plus the equally strange Sudanese Mercenaries we hire to guard our guards there(don't ask me why, I havn't figured it out myself) walking through it all, judging the quality of stuff, and I turned my head to the front of me and saw the road seperating the living quarters from the merchant sector, the roadblocks, freshly paved roads soon to be destroyed by tracked vehicles, 10 meter tall T-walls with a Irregular pentagon pressed into it pointed upwards making it look more middle eastern, and I focused down the road and waw soldier walking in the distance, and in the horizon, where the T walls seemed to converge, two large pyrimids arose, and from instide of them, Chinooks rose up into the air, and swooped down low to take up.

 

This scene reminded me of a Saddam era printing of a museam and archeology guide I found (in English) showing the Babylonians and Assysarians. I had regognized most of the pictures from my some of the earliest books I've read, which were on ancient civilizations. Pictures of soldiers and merchants, chariots and kings, and laws. I had seen it all. No power greater than that has ever exsisted in this nation, it is technicly in it's hight, my eyes recorded a chapter of Iraqi history, the oldest continiously civilized portion of the planet.... and I say it sucked. It was so not worth it.

 

That just ruined a good hobby, I am so, soooo less trusting of everything now. Old forms in new dress, this country must of always sucked. Think of your favorite civilization, live Rome for example, and actually imagine yourself there, beamed there into the enviroment. Would you be able to support a Slave owning, Human Sacrificing murderous thug of a city, with it's military cults and who knows what else? How long would you stand around before you called it quits and jumped back into the time machine?

 

I loved history, still read it alot, but started getting tired of it after that event, at least the ancient version of it, and focused on some revolutionary history, like just last night I was reading about the treaty with England George Washington signed saying it was okay for the British to kidnap American sailors so long as Britian recognized US neutrality. That killed another childhood vision of mine. There are so many other examples out there, I just really don't trust anything anymore. There wasn't ever a golden age, we've mearly experienced different shades of brown. The urge to read and study is still there, but I hate seeing my experiences in relationship to history, it makes it too real to know exactly what it's like to be there, and how pointless it all really was. Of all the daily soap-operas of the roman empire heaving in every day life, how much of it survived in wars and plaques and reformations and loss of cultural memory? Not very much, I'm not denying it's casual influence in Space-time, I'm talking about direct conscious inheritance of the actions of the day. We didn't get very much from the Romans other than a whole lot of loathing as well as longing of them throughout the darkages. So much less from Byzantium, or North Africa, the Persians, the whoever you want here. The script of the play was lost, but new actors played on, and you know what, I doubt the performance of the play was hurt much by the new writers, cause in the end, it's all the same. It could of been a Soviet siting here writing about the Jihads, or a modern Roman, or an Empire of Eskimos. Men are the same the world over, the nostalgia isn't worth it. Gleam all the poetry you want, erect the walls to your modern castles and sing your songs, your life isn't as unique as you think it is, if you wern't there to do it, someone else would be, with a somewhat different variation doing exactly what your doing.

 

My idols are dead now, and I have no gods to follow. Just a mindless urge to learn and consume, and restructure things. I ask myself why? I follow in their footsteps why? Why look into philosophy, or history anymore? Do you guys have a reason, does anyone understand what I'm saying?

[caldrail]

You seem disillusioned by life, the universe, and everything right now. Believe me, I have every reason to b disillusioned too, but then I ask myself - Why should I be unhappy? I am a free man born into a wealthy democratic culture with a long heritage. Sure, things haven't gone well for me over the last decade, but then I'm still reasonably fit and healthy whilst many at my age aren't. Your experience in Iraq has shown you what humanity is - a bunch of animals doing what they need to do to survive, dominate, and thrive. It isn't always pleasant is it? First, accept that humanity is what it is - there's no nobility about our species, thats simply a christian myth, but there can be a noble purpose in each of us - and thats your decision.

 

Regarding history, I always remember that quote from Cicero. "To know nothing of history is to remain forever a child". How true. How often do we make the same old mistakes that people made in Cicero's time? How can we know where we're going if we don't know where we've been?

 

For me, despite the trials that life has handed out (and to be fair, there are plenty of people who've had it much worse), I say take pleasure in small things. Thats not a pun in any way, its simply that our modern materialistic society often dulls our enjoyment of all those simple pleasures. Take time out and find places of natural beauty and learn to appreciate them in solitude, at least for while anyway. Its amazing how a glimpse of the natural world can be so uplifting, and I'm not the only person who says that.

[Moonlapse]

My idols are dead now, and I have no gods to follow. Just a mindless urge to learn and consume, and restructure things. I ask myself why? I follow in their footsteps why? Why look into philosophy, or history anymore? Do you guys have a reason, does anyone understand what I'm saying?

When the assumptions that your reality is based on are yanked out from underneath you, you have to completely start from scratch. You will spend years of doubt and insecurity trying to put things back together, but nothing will ever go back together as neatly as it seemed to before. There will always be incredible contradictions that will seem too overwhelming to resolve, and you'll feel like you are running uphill on a sheet of ice. That's life though, thats the challenge that humans are designed to struggle against, and you just HAVE TO keep pushing. You are realizing something that empowers you beyond the people who have not had their phony social conditioning broken. There are many positive things left in life, and things that will bring you joy, but they are entirely different from the things that you've been brought up to expect and you will have to find them. You're not alone and you're not the only person to wake up from your sleep-walking, so don't worry.

 

Good luck with your bookpress, I've developed a similar interest lately, as well as an interest in 19th century literature. Drop me line if you want to shoot the s***.

 

Here's a copyright-free book suggestion for you: Philip Dru, Administrator by Edward Mandell House

[Kosmo]

At somepoint we all go thru this stage. My image of Rome changed when I realized that the classical city of perfection was a oriental meltpot in a hopeless disorder and with a nasty smell.

Strangely this did not reduce my interest in History but created a stronger desire to know how things really were instead of looking for pretty unreal pictures.

Every piece of the jigsaw I find adds color to a more real and vivid image instead of the image people like Gibbons had.

To say that all it's the same contradicts what this history tells us. Things change and don't go back. The script was not made for Rome or Persia, but for all humans and we did not see the end yet.

You had a peek at history in the making and that's not always nice.

[caldrail]

Rudyard Kipling wrote this at the start of the twentieth century. Its pretty inspirational, and worth repeating here...

 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;

If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!